Mr Tupman looked around. The wine, which had already brought sleep to Mr Snodgrass and Mr Winkle, had also affectedf Mr Pickwick. That gentleman had gradually passed through the various stages which precede the great tiredness caused by dinner, and the results of that tiredness. He had gone through the ordinary changes from the height of conviviality to the depth of misery, and from the depth of misery to the height of conviviality.

Like a gas-lamp in the street with the wind blowing on it, he had shown a strange brilliancy for a moment, then sank so low that he hardly seemed awake; after a short interval, he had burst out again, to enlighten for a moment; then flickered with an uncertain, staggering sort of light, and then gone out altogether. His head was sunk upon his chest, and steady snoring, with an occasional choke, were the only sounds which showed that the great man was still there.

Mr Tupman was strongly tempted to go to the ball, and to form his first impressions of the beauty of the Kentish ladies. The temptation to take the stranger with him was equally great. He knew nothing about the place and its inhabitants, and the stranger seemed to know as much about the town and its people as if he had lived there since he was a baby.