Girod intervene.

Etienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered; but adversity and
the snow had made him _non compos vocis_. The adversity consisted of
the stranded San Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second-story
work, and then a career as a professional palmist, jumping from town to
town. For, like other professional palmists, every time he worked the
Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved along the Line of Least
Resistance. Though Etienne did not confide this to us, we surmised
that he had moved out into the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a
constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In his most sacred blue
language he dilated upon the subject of snow; for Etienne was
Paris-born and loved the snow with the same passion that an orchid does.

"Mee-ser-rhable!" commented Etienne, and took another three fingers.

"Complete, cast-iron, pussy-footed, blank... blank!" said Ross, and
followed suit.

"Rotten," said I.

The cook said nothing. He stood in the door weighing our outburst; and
insistently from behind that frozen visage I got two messages (via the
M. A. M wireless). One was that George considered our vituperation
against the snow childish; the other was that George did not love
Dagoes. Inasmuch as Etienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the
message wrong. So I queried the other: "Bright eyes, you don't really
mean Dagoes, do you?" and over the wireless came three deathly, psychic
taps: "Yes." Then I reflected that to George all foreigners were
probably "Dagoes." I had once known another camp cook who had thought
Mons., Sig., and Millie (Trans-Mississippi for Mlle.) were Italian
given names; this cook used to marvel therefore at the paucity of
Neo-Roman precognomens, and therefore why not--

I have said that snow is a test of men. For one day, two days, Etienne
stood at the window, Fletcherizing his finger nails and shrieking and
moaning at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as unbearable
as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went out on the second day to
look at my horse, slipped on a stone, broke my collarbone, and
thereafter underwent not the snow test, but the test of
flat-on-the-back. A test that comes once too often for any man to
stand.

However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely a spectator, and from
my couch in the big room I could lie and watch the human interplay with
that detached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French writers tel