Rodolphe as the widow disappeared.
"I promise you that you shall be suited--full allowance of melancholy
lyrics, better got up than a duchess, orthography and all. Good old
lady! May Heaven reward you with a life of a hundred and seven
years--equal to that of a good brandy!"

"I object," said Marcel.

"That's true," said Rodolphe, "I forgot that you have her hand to paint,
and that so long a life would make you lose money." And lifting his
hands he gravely ejaculated, "Heaven, do not grant my prayer! Ah!" he
continued, "I was in jolly good luck to come here."

"By the way," asked Marcel, "what did you want?"

"I recollect--and now especially that I have to pass the night in making
these verses, I cannot do without what I came to ask you for, namely,
first, some dinner; secondly, tobacco and a candle; thirdly, your
polar-bear costume."

"To go to the masked ball?"

"No, indeed, but as you see me here, I am as much frozen up as the grand
army in retreat from Russia. Certainly my green frock-coat and
Scotch-plaid trowsers are very pretty, but much too summery; they would
do to live under the equator; but for one who lodges near the pole, as I
do, a white bear skin is more suitable; indeed I may say necessary."

"Take the fur!" said Marcel, "it's a good idea; warm as a dish of
charcoal; you will be like a roll in an oven in it."

Rodolphe was already inside the animal's skin.

"Now," said he, "the thermometer is going to be really mad."

"Are you going out so?" said Marcel to his friend, after they had
finished an ambiguous repast served in a penny dish.

"I just am," replied Rodolphe. "Do you think I care for public opinion?
Besides, today is the beginning of carnival."

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. "Caeser passed the Rubicon, but he
could not have passed