this to myself, and I made an effort to raise my unfortunate foot which I
had forgotten, a heroic effort, but it was impossible to accomplish it.
The leg was so benumbed that I could not move it. As well as I could I
hoisted myself upon the other leg, and, hobbling, reached my armchair
without appearing too lame. The room seemed to me twice as wide to cross
as the Champ de Mars, for hardly had I taken a step in its chilly
atmosphere--the fire had gone out, it was April, and the chateau
overlooked the Loire--when the cold reminded me of the scantiness of my
costume. What! to cross the room before that angel, who was doubtless
watching me, in the most grotesque of costumes, and with a helpless leg
into the bargain! Why had I forgotten my dressing-gown? However, I
reached the armchair, into which I sank. I seized my dress-coat which
was beside me, threw it over my shoulders, twisted my white cravat round
my neck, and, like a soldier bivouacking, I sought a comfortable
position.

It would have been all very well without the icy cold that assailed my
legs, and I saw nothing in reach to cover me. I said to myself,
"Captain, the position is not tenable," when at length I perceived on the
couch--One sometimes is childishly ashamed, but I really dared not, and I
waited for a long minute struggling between a sense of the ridiculous and
the cold which I felt was increasing. At last, when I heard my wife's
breathing become more regular and thought that she must be asleep, I
stretched out my arm and pulled toward me her wedding-gown which was on
the couch--the silk rustled enough to wake the dead--and with the energy
which one always finds on an emergency, wrapped it round me savagely like
a railway rug. Then yielding to an involuntary fit of sybaritism, I
unhooked the bellows and tried to get the fire to burn.

"After all," I said to myself, arranging the blackened embers and working