him get silently into his bed. One might have thought some accident had overtaken him, which he was anxious to conceal from his comrades. In fact, the opposite end of the bolster to that which he had held in his hands, had burst by the violence of the blows, and all the feathers had escaped. This down made a mountain, just where the sheet which protected my head joined the bolster. I was totally unaware of the fact. As I did not feel any more blows, and having heard my last enemy retire to his bed, I gently put out my head and, as for the past ten minutes I had become more or less stifled, according as I tightened or loosened the sheet, I drew a full breath. I swallowed a big armful of feathers. Suffocation was instantaneous, almost complete. I uttered an inarticulate cry, and feeling myself literally being strangled, I began to roll about the room. My companions at first thought I had now taken it into my head to pirouette like a ballet dancer, just as they had fancied a fight; but they realised at last that the strangled sounds I gave forth expressed acute agony. Gondon was the first to realise that something very serious had happened to me, from some unknown cause, and that I was _in extremis_. Félix, who alone could have explained my gyrations and my wheezings, lay still, and pretended to be asleep. Gondon rushed into the kitchen, returned with a candle, and threw light on the scene. I must have been a very funny spectacle, and I confess, there was a general burst of laughter. But though I had been pretty gluttonous, I had not swallowed all the feathers and all the down: some stuck to my curly head, giving me a false air of resemblance to Polichinelle. This false air soon began to look like reality from the flush of redness that strangulation had sent into my face. They thought water was the best thing to give me. One of my companions, named Labarre, ran in his shirt to the pump and filled a pot with water, which he laughingly brought me. Such hilarity, when my torture had reached its height, drove me wild. I seized the pot by the handle, and chucked the contents down Labarre's back. The water was icy cold. Its temperature was little in harmony with the natural warmth of his blood, and it produced such gambols and such contortions on the part of the anointed, that, in spite of my various woes, the desire to laugh was now on my side. I made a different effort from any I had tried hitherto, and I expectorated some of the feathers and down which had blocked my throat. From that moment I was safe. Nevertheless, I continued to spit feathers for a week, and I coughed for a month. I beg my reader's pardon for this digression; but, as I had neglected to put down this important episode in my life in its chronological order, it will not be deemed extraordinary if I seize the first opportunity that presents itself to repair this omission. Well, I met Gondon coming out of Oudet's house. He had a hundred francs in his hand.