on 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 the little instrument with a thousand precautions, "after all,
I have behaved like a gentleman. If the General saw me at this moment he
would laugh in my face; but no matter, I have acted rightly."

Had I not sworn to be sincere, I do not know whether I should
acknowledge to you that I suddenly felt horrible tinglings in the nasal
regions. I wished to restrain myself, but the laws of nature are those
which one can not escape. My respiration suddenly ceased, I felt a
superhuman power contract my facial muscles, my nostrils dilated, my
eyes closed, and all at once I sneezed with such violence that the
bottle of Eau des Carmes shook again. God forgive me! A little cry
came from the bed, and immediately afterward the most silvery frank and
ringing outbreak of laughter followed. Then