Into one such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw
within a charming genre picture. In a room, all white wainscot and
crimson wall-paper, a perfect gem of colour after the black, empty
darkness in which I had been groping, a pretty girl was telling a
story, as well as I could make out, to an attentive child upon her
knee, while an old woman sat placidly dozing over the fire. You
may be sure I was not behindhand with a story for myself--a good
old story after the manner of G. P. R. James and the village
melodramas, with a wicked squire, and poachers, and an attorney,
and a virtuous young man with a genius for mechanics, who should
love, and protect, and ultimately marry the girl in the crimson
room. Baudelaire has a few dainty sentences on the fancies that we
are inspired with when we look through a window into other people's
lives; and I think Dickens has somewhere enlarged on the same text.
The subject, at least, is one that I am seldom weary of
entertaining. I remember, night after night, at Brussels, watching
a good family sup together, make merry, and retire to rest; and
night after night I waited to see the candles lit, and the salad
made, and the last salutations dutifully exchanged, without any
abatement of interest. Night after night I found the scene rivet
my attention and keep me awake in bed with all manner of quaint
imaginations.
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