ith
years, that she asked her husband one evening:
"Look here, Henry! You ought to have a furnace put into the house; it
would dry the walls. I assure you that I cannot keep warm from morning
till night."
At first he was stunned at this extravagant idea of introducing a furnace
into his manor-house. It would have seemed more natural to him to have
his dogs fed out of silver dishes. He gave a tremendous laugh from the
bottom of his chest as he exclaimed:
"A furnace here! A furnace here! Ha! ha! ha! what a good joke!"
She persisted:
"I assure you, dear, I feel frozen; you don't feel it because you are
always moving about; but all the same, I feel frozen."
He replied, still laughing:
"Pooh! you'll get used to it, and besides it is excellent for the health.
You will only be all the better for it. We are not Parisians, damn it! to
live in hot-houses. And, besides, the spring is quite near."
About the beginning of January, a great misfortune befell her. Her father
and mother died in a carriage accident. She came to Paris for the
funeral. And her sorrow took entire possession of her mind for about six
months.
The mildness of the beautiful summer days finally roused her, and she
lived along in a state of sad languor until autumn.
When the cold weather returned, she was brought face to face, for the
first time, with the gloomy future. What was she to do? Nothing. What was
going to happen to her henceforth? Nothing. What expectation, what hope,
could revive her heart? None. A doctor who was consulted declared that
she would never have children.
Sharper, more penetrating still than the year before, the cold made her
suffer continually.
She stretched out her shivering hands to the big flames. The glaring fire
burned her face; but icy whiffs seemed to glide down her back and to
penetrate between her skin and her underclothing. And she shivered from
head to foot. Innumerable draughts of air appeared to have taken up their
abode in the apartment, living, crafty currents of air as cruel as
enemies. She encountered them at every moment; they blew on her
incessantly their perfidious and frozen hatred, now on her face, now on
her hands, and now on her back.
Once more she spoke of a furnace; but her husband listened to her request
as if she were asking for the moon. The introduction of such an apparatus
at Parville appeared to him as impossible as the discovery of the
Philosopher's Stone.
Having been at Rou
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