Fragrant puffs are issuing even now from the mammoth pot-au-feu there over the fire, and we shall presently wash down its savoury contents with draughts of generous wine, which I see already awaiting us on the table yonder.

It is warm and bright and cosy in this room, and we appreciate and enjoy it all doubly, after the darkness and the cold and the danger from which we have escaped into the grateful shelter of this hospitable roof; and to crown the whole, our host is the grand, illustrious, incomparable Bellombre--flower and cream of all comedians, past, present and future, and best of good fellows." "Our happiness would be complete if only poor Matamore were here," said Isabelle with a sigh.
"Pray what has happened to him ?" asked Bellombre, who knew him by reputation.
The tyrant told him the tragic story of the snow-storm, and its fatal consequences.

"But for this thrice-blessed meeting with my old and faithful friend here," Blazius added, "the same fate would probably have overtaken us ere morning--we should all have been found, frozen stiff and stark, by the next party of travellers on the post road." "That would have been a pity indeed," Bellombre rejoined, and glancing admiringly at Isabelle and Serafina, added gallantly, "but surely these young goddesses would have melted the snow, and thawed the ice, with the fire I see shining in their sparkling eyes." "You attribute too much power to our eyes," Scrafina made answer; "they could not even have made any impression upon a heart, in the thick, impenetrable darkness that enveloped us; the tears that the icy cold forced from them would have extinguished the flames of the most ardent love." While they sat at supper, Blazius told their host of the sad condition of their affairs, at which he seemed no way surprised.
"There are always plenty of ups and downs in a theatrical career," he said--"the wheel of Fortune turns very fast in that profession; but if misfortunes come suddenly, so also does prosperity follow quickly in their train.

Don't be discouraged!--things are brightening with you now.
Tomorrow morning I will send one of my stout farm-horses to bring your chariot on here, and we will rig up a theatre in my big barn; there is a large town not far from this which will send us plenty of spectators.
If the entertainment does not fetch as good a sum as I think it will, I have a little fund of pistoles lying idle here that will be entirely at your service, for, by Apollo! I would not leave my good Blazius and his friends in distress so long as I had a copper in my purse." "I see that you are always the same warm-hearted, openhanded Bellombre as of old," cried the pedant, grasping the other's outstretched hand warmly; "you have not grown rusty and hard in consequence of your bucolic occupations." "No," Bellombre replied, with a smile; "I do not let my brain lie fallow while I cultivate my fields.

I make a point of reading over frequently the good old authors, seated comfortably by the fire with my feet on the fender, and I read also such new works as I am able to procure, from time to time, here in the depths of the country.