I had forgotten all this....  How cold it was!  Brrr!...

Whilst Wattrelot was taking himself off I braced myself for the necessary effort of getting out of the warm sheets.  Like a coward, I kept on allowing myself successive respites, vowing to rise heroically after each.

“I will get up as soon as Wattrelot has reached the landing of the first floor....  I will get up when I hear him walking on the pavement of the hall, ... or rather when I hear the entrance-door shut, and his boots creaking on the gravel path....”

But every noise was hushed.  Wattrelot was already some way off, and I still shied at this act, which, after all, was inevitable:  to get out of bed in a little ice-cold room at two o’clock in the morning.  Through the window, which had neither shutter nor curtain, I saw a small piece of the sky, beautifully clear, in which myriads of stars were twinkling.  The day before, when I came in to go to bed, it was freezing hard.  That morning the frost, I thought, must be terrible.

“Come, up!” With a bound I was on the ground, and rushed at once to the little pitch-pine washstand.  Rapid ablutions would wake me up thoroughly.  Horror!  The water in the jug was frozen.  Oh! not very deeply, no doubt; but all the same I had to break a coating of ice that had formed on the surface.  However, I was happy to feel more nimble after having washed my face.  Quick!  Two warm waistcoats under my jacket, my large cloak with its cape, my fur gloves, my campaigning cap pulled over my ears, and there I was, with a candle in my hand, going down the grand staircase of the chateau.

For I was quartered in a chateau.  The very word makes one think of a warm room, well upholstered, well furnished, with soft carpets and comfortable armchairs.  But, alas! it was nothing of the sort....  The good lady whose house it was had provided for all contingencies; the family rooms had been prudently dismantled and double-locked.  A formidable concierge had the keys, and I was happy indeed when I found the butler’s room in the attics.  His bed, with its white sheets, seemed to me very desirable.  And then, as we say in time of peace, one must take things as they come.

The open hall-door let in a wave of cold air, which struck cold on my face.  But I had not a minute to lose.  The detachment was to start at half-past two punctually, and it had, no doubt, already formed up in the market-place.  I hurried into the street.  The tall pines of the park stood out black against the silver sky, whilst the bare branches of the other trees formed thousands of arabesques and strange patterns all round.  Not the slightest noise was to be heard in the limpid, diaphanous night, in which the air seemed as pure and rare as on the summits of lofty mountains.  Under my footsteps the gravel felt soft, but, once I had got outside the iron gate, I found myself on ground as hard as stone.  The mud formed by recent rains and the ruts hollowed by streams of convoys had frozen, and the road was a maze of furrows and inequalities which made me stumble again and again.