e into contact with the snow.
However, the little warmth left in me melted the snow about me; and when
I recovered consciousness, I found myself in the middle of a round hole,
where I stood shouting as long as I could. But the sun was rising, so I
had very little chance of being heard. Was there any one in the fields
yet? I pulled myself up, using my feet as a spring, resting on one of
the dead, whose ribs were firm. You may suppose that this was not the
moment for saying, 'Respect courage in misfortune!' In short, monsieur,
after enduring the anguish, if the word is strong enough for my frenzy,
of seeing for a long time, yes, quite a long time, those cursed Germans
flying from a voice they heard where they could see no one, I was dug
out by a woman, who was brave or curious enough to come close to my
head, which must have looked as though it had sprouted from the ground
like a mushroom. This woman went to fetch her husband, and between them
they got me to their poor hovel.

"It would seem that I must have again fallen into a catalepsy--allow me
to use the word to describe a state of which I have no idea, but which,
from the account given by my hosts, I suppose to have been the effect
of that malady. I remained for six months between life and death; not
speaking, or, if I spoke, talking in delirium. At last, my hosts got me
admitted to the hospital at Heilsberg.

"You will understand, Monsieur, that I came out of the womb of the grave
as naked as I came from my mother's; so that six months afterwards, when
I remembered, one fine morning, that I had been Colonel Chabert, and
when, on recovering my wits, I tried to exact from my nurse rather more
respect than she paid to any poor devil, all my companions in the ward
began to laugh. Luckily for me, the surgeon, out of professional pride,
had answered for my cure, and was naturally interested in his patient.
When I told him coherently about my former life, this good man, named
Sparchmann, signed a deposition, drawn up in the legal form of his
country, giving an account of the miraculous way in which I had escaped
from the trench dug for the dead, the day and hour when I had been found
by my benefactress and her husband, the nature and exact spot of my
injuries, adding to these documents a description of my person.

"Well, monsieur, I have neither these important pieces of evidence,
nor the declaration I made before a notary at Heilsberg, with a view
to establishing my ide