ickness,
but also of extraordinary lightness, and for a few minutes we had
no confidence in their power to thaw us. But they were filled with
swan's-down; and presently a novel and delightful sensation--that of
warmth--began to steal upon us. It steadily increased, until in quarter
of an hour there might be seen upon our foreheads and noses, which were
the only parts of us open to view, the beads of perspiration. It was a
marvellous experience. The memory of the crimson comforters has remained
with me through life; light as sunset clouds, they accomplished the
miracle of importing tropic warmth into the circle of the frozen
arctic. I think we must have been undressed and night-gowned before this
treatment; at any rate, I have forgotten how we got to bed, but to bed
we somehow got, and slept the blessed sleep of childhood.

The next morning my father, apparently as an accompaniment of his cold,
was visited by a severe nosebleed; no importance was attached to
it, beyond its preventing him from going forth to superintend the
examination of our luggage at the custom-house--the mountain having been
registered through from London. This duty was, therefore, done by Miss
Shepard and my mother. The next day, at dinner, the nosebleeding began
again. "And thus," observed my father, "my blood must be reckoned among
the rivers of human gore which have been shed in Paris, and especially
in the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotines used to stand"--and
where our restaurant was. But these bleedings, which came upon him at
several junctures during his lifetime, and were uniformly severe and
prolonged, probably had a significance more serious than was supposed.
The last one occurred not many weeks before his death, and it lasted
twenty-four hours; he was never the same afterwards. He joked about it
then, as now, but there was the forewarning of death in it.

But that day lies still unsuspected in the future, six years away.
For the present, we were in splendid Paris, with Napoleon III. in the
Tuileries, and Baron Haussmann regnant in the stately streets. For a
week we went to and fro, admiring and--despite the cold, the occasional
icy rains, and once even a dark fog--delighted. In spirit and in
substance, nothing could be more different from London. For my part,
I enjoyed it without reservation; the cold, which depressed my sick
father, exhilarated me. For Notre Dame, the Tuileries, the Louvre, the
Madeleine, the pictures, and th