te
calm."

"I remain calm when the magic-lantern is going by! Ah! my dear, you are
very severe on me, and really--"

"Yes, yes, jest about it, but it was none the less true that the
recollections of your childhood have failed."

"Now, my dear, do you want me to leave my boots out on the hearth this
evening on going to bed? Do you want me to call in the magic-lantern man,
and to look out a big sheet and a candle end for him, as my poor mother
used to do? I can still see her as she used to entrust her white sheet to
him. 'Don't make a hole in it, at least,' she would say. How we used to
clap our hands in the mysterious darkness! I can recall all those joys,
my dear, but you know so many other things have happened since then.
Other pleasures have effaced those."

"Yes, I can understand, your bachelor pleasures; and, there, I am sure
that this Christmas Eve is the first you have passed by your own
fireside, in your dressing-gown, without supper; for you used to sup on
Christmas Eve."

"To sup, to sup."

"Yes, you supped; I will wager you did."

"I have supped two or three times, perhaps, with friends, you know; two
sous' worth of roasted chestnuts and--"

"A glass of sugar and water."

"Oh, pretty nearly so. It was all very simple; as far as I can recollect.
We chatted a little and went to bed."

"And he says that without a smile. You have never breathed a word to me
of all these simple pleasures."

"But, my dear, all that I am telling you is strictly true. I remember
that once, however, it was rather lively. It was at Ernest's, and we had
some music. Will you push that log toward me? But, never mind; it will
soon be midnight, and that is the hour when reasonable people--"

Louise, rising and throwing her arms around my neck, interrupted me with:
"Well, I don't want to be reasonable, I want to wipe out all your
memories of chestnuts and glasses of sugar and water."

Then pushing me into my dressing-room she locked the door.

"But, my dear, what is the matter with you?" said I through the keyhole.

"I want ten minutes, no more. Your newspaper is on the mantelpiece; you
have not read it this evening. There are some matches in the corner."

I heard a clatter of crockery, a rustling of silk my wife mad?

Louise soon came and opened the door.

"Don't scold me for having shut you up," she said, kissing me. "Look how
I have beautified myself? Do you recognize the coiffure you are so fond
of, the chignon high