y study. It is very cold; Madame Menin, my housekeeper, has
let the fire out. Hallo! she has left her duster, too, lying on the
manuscript of my essay.

Is it an omen, a presage of that dust which awaits my still unfinished
work? Who can fathom Dame Fortune's ironic humor?

Eight o'clock.... Counsellor Mouillard has finished his pleadings and
must be sitting down to a game of whist with Counsellors Horlet and
Hublette, of the Court of Bourges. They wait for me to make up the four.
Perish the awful prospect!

And M. Charnot? He, I suppose, is still spinning the paper spiral. How
easily serious people are amused! Perhaps I am a serious person. The
least thing amuses me. By the way, is Mademoiselle Jeanne fair or dark?
Let me try to recollect. Why, fair, of course. I remember the glint of
gold in the little curls about her temples, as she stood by the lamp. A
pleasant face, too; not exactly classic, but rosy and frank; and then she
has that animation which so many pretty women lack.

Madame Menin has forgotten something else. She has forgotten to shut my
window. She has designs upon my life!

I have just shut the window. The night is calm, its stars twinkling
through a haze. The year ends mournfully.

I remember at school once waking suddenly on such a night as this, to
find the moonlight streaming into my eyes. At such a moment it is always
a little hard to collect one's scattered senses, and take in the midnight
world around, so unhomely, so absolutely still. First I cast my eyes
along the two rows of beds that stretched away down the dormitory--two
parallel lines in long perspective; my comrades huddled under their
blankets in shapeless masses, gray or white according as they lay near or
far from the windows; the smoky glimmer of the oil lamp half-way down the
room; and at the end, in the deeper shadows, the enclosure of yellow
curtains surrounding the usher's bed.

Not a sound about me; all was still. But without, my ear, excited and
almost feverishly awake, caught the sound of a strange call, very sweet,
again and again repeated--fugitive notes breathing appeal, tender and
troubled. Now they grew quite distant, and I heard no more than a phantom
of sound; now they came near, passed over my head, and faded again into
the distance. The moon's clear rays invited me to clear up the mystery. I
sprang from my bed, and ran in my nightshirt to open the window. It was
about eleven o'clock. Together the keen night-air an