“Your words are golden, friend Scapin,” the pedant said, “let us by all means gather up the crumbs that are left of former plenty, though they will be but few and musty, I fear.  There are still, however, two or three bottles of wine remaining—­the last of a goodly store—­enough for us each to have a glass.  What a pity that the soil hereabouts is not of that peculiar kind of clay upon which certain tribes of American savages are said to subsist, when they have been unlucky in their hunting and fishing, and have nothing better to eat.”

They accordingly turned the chariot off from the road into the edge of the thicket, unharnessed the horse, and left him free to forage for himself; whereupon he began to nibble, with great apparent relish, at the scattered spears of grass peeping up here and there through the snow.  A large rug was brought from the chariot and spread upon the ground in a sheltered spot, upon which the comedians seated themselves, in Turkish fashion, in a circle, while Blazius distributed among them the sorry rations he had managed to scrape together; laughing and jesting about them in such an amusing manner that all were fain to join in his merriment, and general good humour prevailed.  The Baron de Sigognac, who had long, indeed always, been accustomed to extreme frugality, in fact almost starvation, and found it easier to bear such trials with equanimity than his companions, could not help admiring the wonderful way in which the pedant made the best of a really desperate situation, and found something to laugh at and make merry over where most people would have grumbled and groaned, and bewailed their hard lot, in a manner to make themselves, and all their companions in misery, doubly unhappy.  But his attention was quickly absorbed in his anxiety about Isabelle, who was deathly pale, and shivering until her teeth chattered, though she did her utmost to conceal her suffering condition, and to laugh with the rest.  Her wraps were sadly insufficient to protect her properly from such extreme cold as they were exposed to then, and de Sigognac, who was sitting beside her, insisted upon sharing his cloak with her—­though she protested against his depriving himself of so much of it—­and beneath its friendly shelter gently drew her slender, shrinking form close to himself, so as to impart some of his own vital warmth to her.  She could feel the quickened beating of his heart as he held her respectfully, yet firmly and tenderly, embraced, and he was soon rewarded for his loving care by seeing the colour return to her pale lips, the happy light to her sweet eyes, and even a faint flush appear on her delicate cheeks.

While they were eating—­or rather making believe to eat their make-believe breakfast—­a singular noise was heard near by, to which at first they paid no particular attention, thinking it was the wind whistling through the matted branches of the thicket, if they thought of it at all; but presently it grew louder, and they could not imagine what it proceeded from.  It was a sort of hissing sound, at once shrill and hoarse, quite impossible to describe accurately.