ed. I was going to decline, not being in the habit of
using a warming-pan, but then I thought of the table-cloth and the
napkins at supper--and my friends said that every one on the mountain
always has fire in the bed in cold, damp weather--so I agreed, and Donna
Anna fetched what looked like a flower-pot containing hot charcoal. She
put this between my sheets with a wicker cage over it, and presently
shifted its position. I wanted her to leave it all night in a corner of
the room to take the chill off, but this met with opposition from all
because they did not wish me to be found in the morning asphyxiated in my
sleep like a Parisian milliner in a novel. I would have chanced it, had
I been allowed, for the milliners always have the greatest difficulty in
stopping up all the chinks, and even then occasionally survive; whereas,
although Donna Anna pinned up a blanket across my window, it did not keep
out the gale that was raging all about the room. The general opinion
being against the charcoal, I acquiesced and it was taken back to its
home in the kitchen. It was the only fire in the house and was what
Dickens would have called an honest and stout little fire. It had cooked
the maccaroni for supper and, after warming all the beds, went back to
rest from its labour until the morning when it would be called to make
the coffee for breakfast. It deserved its rest, not that it dried my
sheets, but it warmed them; and the doctor assured me that it is the
coldness and not the dampness of wet sheets that gives one a chill, so he
considered me practically safe. If only I had had a cold at the time, he
said, I should have been completely safe on the principle that one must
be off with the old cold before one can be on with the new. Owing,
doubtless, to the kindly influence of the good little fire, I passed a
comfortable night and took no harm.

When I came down in the morning there was the student immersed in his
philosophy; the industrious little fire had obligingly allowed itself to
be coaxed into two, and he had secured part of it in a flower-pot on the
floor between his feet and had a rug over his knees. The cloud was as
thick and the wind as boisterous as it had been the day before, so I
followed his example, got another flowerpot, split off a bit of fire for
myself and sat down with a rug.

The next morning the cloud had gone and I returned to Trapani. The bus
started very early and I had to rise before the sun,