Having been at Rouen on business one day, he brought back to his wife a dainty foot warmer made of copper, which he laughingly called a “portable furnace”; and he considered that this would prevent her henceforth from ever being cold.

Toward the end of December she understood that she could not always live like this, and she said timidly one evening at dinner: 

“Listen, dear!  Are we, not going to spend a week or two in Paris before spring:” 

He was stupefied.

“In Paris?  In Paris?  But what are we to do there?  Ah! no by Jove!  We are better off here.  What odd ideas come into your head sometimes.”

She faltered: 

“It might distract us a little.”

He did not understand.

“What is it you want to distract you?  Theatres, evening parties, dinners in town?  You knew, however, when you came here, that you ought not to expect any distractions of this kind!”

She saw a reproach in these words, and in the tone in which they were uttered.  She relapsed into silence.  She was timid and gentle, without resisting power and without strength of will.

In January the cold weather returned with violence.  Then the snow covered the earth.

One evening, as she watched the great black cloud of crows dispersing among the trees, she began to weep, in spite of herself.

Her husband came in.  He asked in great surprise: 

“What is the matter with you?”

He was happy, quite happy, never having dreamed of another life or other pleasures.  He had been born and had grown up in this melancholy district.  He felt contented in his own house, at ease in body and mind.

He did not understand that one might desire incidents, have a longing for changing pleasures; he did not understand that it does not seem natural to certain beings to remain in the same place during the four seasons; he seemed not to know that spring, summer, autumn, and winter have, for multitudes of persons, fresh amusements in new places.

She could say nothing in reply, and she quickly dried her eyes.  At last she murmured in a despairing tone: 

“I am—­I—­I am a little sad—­I am a little bored.”

But she was terrified at having even said so much, and added very quickly: 

“And, besides—­I am—­I am a little cold.”

This last plea made him angry.

“Ah! yes, still your idea of the furnace.  But look here, deuce take it! you have not had one cold since you came here.”

Night came on.  She went up to her room, for she had insisted on having a separate apartment.  She went to bed.  Even in bed she felt cold.  She thought: 

“It will be always like this, always, until I die.”

And she thought of her husband.  How could he have said: 

“You—­have not had one cold since you came here”?

She would have to be ill, to cough before he could understand what she suffered!