Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The Room in the Dragon Volant Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

In the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly three-and-twenty, and had just succeeded to a very large sum in consols and other securities. The first fall of Napoleon had thrown the continent open to English excursionists, anxious, let us suppose, to improve their minds by foreign travel; and I-the slight check of the "hundred days" removed, by the genius of Wellington, on the field of Waterloo-was now added to the philosophic throng. I was posting up to Paris from Brussels, following, I presume, the route that the allied army had pursued but a few weeks before-more carriages than you could believe were pursuing the same line. You could not look back or forward, without seeing into far perspective the clouds of dust which marked the line of the long series of vehicles. We were perpetually passing relays of return-horses, on their way, jaded and dusty, to the inns from which they had been taken. They were arduous times for those patient public servants. The whole world seemed posting up to Paris.