"Look here, wife," said M. de Peyrehorade in a determined voice, as he extended his right leg towards her, clad in a fine silk stocking, "if my Venus had broken this leg I should not have minded." "Good gracious! Peyrehorade, how can you talk like that? Fortunately, the man is going on well.... And yet I cannot bring myself to look at the statue which did such an evil thing as that. Poor Jean Coll!" "Wounded by Venus, sir," said M. de Peyrehorade, laughing loudly. "The rascal complains of being wounded by Venus! "'Veneris nec praemia nôris.' Who has not suffered from the wounds of Venus?" M. Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, winked with an understanding air, and looked at me as though to say, "Do you understand that, you Parisian?" Supper ended at last. For an hour I had not been able to eat any more. I was tired, and could not hide my frequent yawns. Madam de Peyrehorade saw it first, and said that it was time to retire. Then began fresh apologies for the poor entertainment I should find. I should not be comfortable as in Paris; in the country things are so different! I must make allowances for the people of Roussillon. It was in vain I protested that after a journey among the mountains a bundle of straw would seem a delicious bed. They still begged me to pardon their poor rustic servants if they did not behave as well as they should. At last, accompanied by M. de Peyrehorade, I reached the room put apart for my use. The staircase, the top steps of which were of wood, led to the centre of a corridor, out of which opened several rooms. "To the right," said my host, "is the set of rooms that I intend for the future Madam Alphonse. Your room is at the end of the passage opposite. You will understand," he added, with a look which he meant to be sly--"you will readily understand that newly married people wish to be by themselves. You are at one end of the house and they at the other." We entered a very handsomely furnished room, where the first object that caught my eye was a bed seven feet long, six broad, and such a height that one needed a stool to get into it. My host pointed out the position of the bell, and satisfied himself that the sugar-bowl was full, and the smelling-bottles of eau de Cologne in their proper places on the toilette table; then he asked me repeatedly if I had all I wanted, wished me good-night and left me alone.