deserted country.

Then she rang for the lamp, and drew near the fire. She burned heaps of
wood without succeeding in warming the spacious apartments reeking with
humidity. She was cold all day long, everywhere, in the drawing-room, at
meals, in her own apartment. It seemed to her she was cold to the marrow
of her bones. Her husband only came in to dinner; he was always out
shooting, or else he was superintending sowing the seed, tilling the
soil, and all the work of the country.

He would come back jovial, and covered with mud, rubbing his hands as he
exclaimed:

"What wretched weather!"

Or else:

"A fire looks comfortable!"

Or sometimes:

"Well, how are you to-day? Are you in good spirits?"

He was happy, in good health, without desires, thinking of nothing save
this simple, healthy, and quiet life.

About December, when the snow had come, she suffered so much from the
icy-cold air of the chateau which seemed to have become chilled in
passing through the centuries just as human beings become chilled with
years, that she asked her husband one evening: