Another chapter, entitled _Effet de Neige_, describes the players' waggon driving off at night through the deep snow. After a time the company miss one of their number, the Matamore (the bragging soldier), who had been following the waggon on foot. They search for him in vain, in vain shout his name at the top of their voices across the great snow plain. No answer. One of them carries a lantern, the red light of which moves along the snow; and we see the long, shapeless shadows following the men upon the white ground. The black dog belonging to the company follows them, howling. Suddenly the howls stop, and we are conscious of the death-like stillness which prevails when falling snow stifles every sound. At last the actor who has the sharpest eyes thinks he sees a curious figure lying beneath a tree, strangely, ominously still. It is he, the luckless Matamore. He is lying with his back against the tree, and his long, outstretched legs are half covered with the driving snow. His gigantic rapier, without which he was never seen, stands at such an odd angle to his breast that under any other circumstances one would have laughed. The lantern-bearer holds the lantern to his poor comrade's face, and gets such a shock that he almost drops it. The face is of a waxy whiteness; the ridge of the nose, which is pinched at the nostrils by the bony fingers of death, shines like a piece of cuttle-bone; the skin is tightened across the temples; snow-flakes lie on the eyebrows and lashes; the dilated eyes have a glassy stare. At each end of the heavy, pointed moustache gleams a little icicle, the weight of which drags down the hair. The seal of eternal silence has closed the lips which have delighted so many an audience with their merry brag; and a death's-head shows beneath the pale, thin face, on which the habit of making grimaces has carved furrows, now terrible in their comicality. "Alas!" says one of his comrades, "our poor Matamore is dead. Exhausted and stupefied by the driving snow, he must have sought shelter for a moment under this tree, and as he has not two ounces of flesh upon his bones, he has been frozen to the marrow in no time. When we were in Paris he reduced his rations every day in order to produce more effect, and he had made himself leaner than a greyhound in the coursing season. Poor Matamore! you are safe now from all the kicks and slaps and drubbings which your part obliged you to submit to! You are as stiff now as if you had swallowed your own dagger." The pathos of the situation is here brought out indirectly by a conscientious plastic treatment of the subject.