When I returned in the evening, I found Sophronia in tears.  The stove men had not quite completed their work, so Sophronia and her assistant had eaten nothing but dry bread since breakfast.  The girl interrupted us to say that the stove was ready, but that she couldn’t get either coal or wood, and would I just come and see why?  I descended five of the cellar stairs, but the others were covered with water, and upon the watery expanse about me floated the wagon-load of wood I had purchased.  The coal heap, under a window fifteen feet away, loomed up like a rugged crag of basaltic rock.  I took soundings with a stick and found the water was rather more than two feet deep.  Fortunately, there were among my war relics a pair of boots as long as the legs of their owner, so I drew these on and descended the stairs with shovel and coal scuttle.  The boots had not been oiled in ten years, so they found accommodation for several quarts of water.  As I strode angrily into the kitchen and set the scuttle down with a suddenness which shook the floor, Sophronia clapped her hands in ecstasy.

“Pierre,” she exclaimed, “you look like the picture of the sturdy retainers of the old English barons.  O, I do hope that water won’t go away very soon.  The rattling of the water in your boots makes your step so impressive.”

I found that in spite of the hunger from which she had suffered, Sophronia had not been idle during the day.  She had coaxed the baker’s man to open the cases of pictures, and she and the domestic had carried each picture to the room in which it was to hang.  The highest ceiling in the house was six and a half feet from the floor, whereas our smallest picture measured three feet and a half in height.  But Sophronia’s art-loving soul was not to be daunted; the pictures being too large to hang, she had leaned them against the walls.

“It’s such an original idea,” said she; “and then, too, it gives each picture such an unusual effect—­don’t you think so?”

I certainly did.

We spent the evening in trying to make our rooms look less like furniture warehouses, but succeeded only partly.  We agreed, too, that we could find something for painters and kalsominers to do, for the ceilings and walls were blotched and streaked so much that our pretty furniture and carpets only made the plastering look more dingy.  But when again we retired, and our lights were put, and only soft moonbeams relieved the darkness, our satisfaction with our new house filled us with pleasant dreams, which we exchanged before sleeping.  After falling asleep, I dreamed of hearing a wonderful symphony performed by an unseen orchestra; it seemed as if Liszt might have composed it, and as if the score was particularly strong in trombones and drums.  Then the scene changed, and I was on a ship in a storm at sea; the gale was blowing my hair about, and huge rain-drops occasionally struck my face.  Sophronia was by my side; but, instead of glorying with me in meeting the storm-king in his home, she complained bitterly of the rain.  The unaccountable absence of her constitutional romanticism provoked me, and I remonstrated so earnestly, that the effort roused me to wakefulness.  But Sophronia’s complaining continued.  I had scarcely realized that I was in a cottage chamber instead of on a ship’s deck, when Sophronia exclaimed: