always congregated at the Chaos, and as,
in its salle à manger and its court-yard, all
that was notable and worth studying in
the way of hallucination, foaming at the
mouth, homicidal mania, epilepsy,
demoniacal possession, hysteria, melancholia,
kleptomania, hypochondriasis, dipsomania,
and midsummer madness, was sure to be
visible and audible at all hours of the day
and night; as, within its walls, there was a
perpetual narration of tales told by idiots,
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing;
of visions so wild and fantastic, that Ossian
read tamely, and Emmanuel Swedenborg
flatly afterwards; and of lies so grandiose
and so impudent that Marco Polo or Sir
John Mandeville might have sickened with
envy to hear them—you were perforce
impelled to make of the Hotel Chaos a
common news-room, exchange, and lounge.
You breakfasted and dined at the table
d'hôte; you smoked and took your
demi-tasse, or your seltzer-and-something, on the
terrace overlooking the court-yard—shaking
sometimes in your shoes, miserable
civilian cads as you were, at the knowledge
of the close propinquity of Marshal
Bombastes and General Fusbos, and sometimes
of a plumed and embroidered aide-de-camp
of the great Emperor Artaxomines himself.
Thus, you " used " the Hotel Chaos,
although you had no bed there, and you
were always heavily in debt to the waiter.
If you wanted to pay him for your dinner,
he had no change; and when you had no
change and nothing to change, perchance,
for ready money was apt to run wofully
short in the mad city of Moriah—he was
sure to present a bill exhibiting a fabulous
back score of breakfasts, dinners,
demi-tasses, and petits verres, and impetuously
demanded payment. If you demurred, he
threatened you with the grand provost.
He knew you to be a miserable cad of a
civilian, only fed upon sufferance,
incessantly watched and followed about by the
gendarmerie and by police agents in plain
clothes, and he also knew that the propriety
of your expulsion altogether from Moriah
was debated every day by some of the
grandees in cocked hats and epaulettes. The best
thing to do was to conciliate the waiter with
humble and obsequious phrases, and,
giving him silver money for himself, promise
to pay the bill—usually a mere schedule
of fictitious items—that afternoon. Under
those circumstances you were tolerably
safe; for in five minutes the head- waiter
usually forgot all about you. He had
dunned somebody else successfully, or the
still small voice of conscience had deterred
him from making another attempt to fleece
you; or—which is the likeliest hypothesis
of all—his intermittent fit of madness had
come on, and he had gone up-stairs to tear
his hair, and claw his flesh, and gnaw the
bedclothes, and howl till he was hoarse,
according to the afternoon custom of the
men of Moriah.

Moriah, I may take occasion to observe,
lest I should get benighted in the maze of
allegory, was, in sane parlance, the fortified
city of METZ, the head-quarters, at the end
of the month of July last, of the Army of
the Rhine, of the Imperial Guard of France,
and of the Emperor Napoleon the Third,
who, with his young son, the Prince Imperial,
his cousin, Prince Napoleon, a brilliant
staff, and a sumptuous following,
were lodged at the Hotel of the Prefecture.
Marshals Le Bœuf and Bazaine,
General de Saint Sauveur (the grand
provost), General Soleil, commanding the
artillery of the Guards, and a glittering
mob of generals, colonels, and aides-de-
camp of the Guards, the staff, and the
line, were at the Hotel Chaos.

But, be it borne in mind that, when I
speak of the Chaotic Inn, my statement
must be taken with a slight reservation or
allowance. You may be horror-stricken at
the confession that there were two Hotels
Chaos in Metz, and that, to this day, I
cannot remember with exactitude which
was which. They were in the same street,
the Grande Rue Colneyhatchi, I think,
exactly opposite one another: each with a
court-yard, each with a terrace, each with
head- waiters, who presented you with
extortionate bills, each full of marshals, generals,
colonels, and aides-de-camp: in fact, as like
unto one another as two peas, or the two
Dromios, or Hippocrates's Twins. One, I
am inclined to think—but Reason totters
on her throne—was called the Grand
Hôtel de Metz. The other—but my brain
burns with volcanic fierceness when I
strive to recal it—was known as the Grand
Hôtel de l'Europe. It is my firm
conviction that, for the major portion of the
edibles and potables I consumed at the
Grand Hôtel de Metz, I paid the waiter at
the Grand Hôtel de l'Europe, and vice
versâ. It did not matter much, then, for
there was a solidarity of insanity between
them, and both were integral parts—if any
integrity could be in that which was
normally and essentially disintegration of
the Hotel Chaos. It matters less now;
since, for aught we know, both hotels have