Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/176

He went half over Paris with all the gravity of the beast whose skin he occupied. Only on passing before a thermometer in an optician’s window he couldn’t help taking a sight at it.

Having returned home not without causing great terror to his porter, Rodolphe lit his candle, carefully surrounding it with an extempore shade of paper to guard it against the malice of the winds, and set to work at once. But he was not long in perceiving that if his body was almost entirely protected from the cold, his hands were not; a terrible numbness seized his fingers which let the pen fall.

“The bravest man cannot struggle against the elements,” said the poet, falling back helpless in his chair. “Cæsar passed the Rubicon, but he could not have passed the Beresina.”

All at once he uttered a cry of joy from the depths of his bear-skin breast, and jumped up so suddenly as to overturn some of his ink on its snowy fur. He had an idea!

Rodolphe drew from beneath his bed a considerable mass of papers, among which were a dozen huge manuscripts of his famous drama, “The Avenger.” This drama, on which he had spent two years, had been made, unmade, and remade so often that all the copies together weighed fully fifteen pounds. He put the last version on one side, and dragged the others towards the fire-place.

“I was sure that with patience I should dispose of it somehow,” he exclaimed. “What a pretty fagot! If I could have foreseen what would happen, I could have written a prologue, and then I should have more fuel to-night. But one can’t foresee everything.” He lit some leaves of the manuscript, in the flame of which he thawed his hands. In five minutes the first act of “The Avenger” was over, and Rodolphe had written three verses of his epitaph.