One of the four great fêtes of the year was approaching, when we should have Sunday and Monday as holidays. Paillet proposed we should both club our thirty-seven francs fifty cents to his seventy-five francs, and that we should go and sink this fabulous sum of fifty crowns in the delights that Soissons, the seat of the _sous-prefecture_, could offer us. The suggestion was hailed with joy. Paillet was deputed cashier, and we boldly took seats on the diligence for Paris, which passes through Villers-Cotterets at half-past three in the morning, and arrives at Soissons at six o'clock. Paillet and Ronsin each took a place in the coupé, where one was already taken, and I went inside, where there were four other passengers, three of whom got out at la Vertefeuille, a post three leagues away from Villers-Cotterets, the fourth continuing his journey to Soissons. From la Vertefeuille to Soissons, therefore, I was left alone with this person, who was a man of forty years or thereabouts, very thin of body, pale of face, with auburn hair and well groomed. He had laid great stress on my sitting near him, and, in order to leave me as much room as possible, squeezed himself as closely into a corner of the coach as he could. I was much touched by this attention, and felt sensibly drawn to the gentleman, who had condescended to treat me with so much consideration. I slept well and anywhere in those days. So, as soon as we got out of the town I fell asleep, only to wake when the horses were changed, and I should most certainly not have waked up then if the three passengers who left us had not trodden on my toes as they got out, with the habitual heavy-footed tread travellers indulge in at the expense of those who remain behind. When the passenger saw I was awake, he began to talk to me, and asked me, in a kindly, interested way, my age, my name and my occupation. I made haste to supply him with full particulars, and he seemed much interested therein. I told him the object of our journey to Soissons; and, as I coughed while I related my tale, he good-naturedly offered me two different sorts of cough lozenges. I accepted both, and in order to get the full benefit of them I put them both in my mouth together; then, although I found the gentleman's conversation agreeable and his manners fascinating, there was something even more seductive and pleasing than that conversation and those manners, namely sleep, so I wished him a good-night, and, with plenty of room to dispose myself in, I settled down in the corner parallel with his, with my back upon one seat and my feet on the other. I do not know how long I had slept when I felt myself awakened in the oddest fashion in the world. My sleeping fellow-traveller had apparently passed from mere interest to a more lively expression of his sentiments, and was embracing me. I imagined he had a nightmare, and I tried to awake him; but as I saw that the more soundly he slept,