When we arrived, we naturally found everybody asleep; at la Ferté-Vidame they go to bed at ten in summer and eight in winter. We set foot on a magnificent carpet of snow, which reminded me of the wolf-hunts of my youth, with my old friends M. Deviolaine and the gamekeepers. How many things had happened between the snows of 1817 and those of 1832 and had melted away even as they! We looked like those who knocked at the outbuildings of the Castle of the Sleeping Beauty; nobody answered us, and, as we were getting more and more benumbed, I was already beginning to talk of breaking in the door of the inn, as I had at M. Dupont-Delporte's country-house, when, from the other side of the door, I heard my nephew's voice. He was exactly the age that I was when going shooting kept me from sleeping--poor boy, he has since died! Half awake from the pleasure to which he was looking forward in the next day's sport he woke up completely at the racket we made, at our desperate cries and, especially, at the sound of Champagny's trumpet. He exerted himself inside as we did outside, to rouse the hotel people from their beds. Finally, swearing, scolding, crotchety, a man got up, calling upon heaven to know if this was the hour to wake honest people. The door opened and the host's bad temper calmed down a little when he saw we had come by post-chaise! That made it justifiable for him to be disturbed at night, and, thenceforward, we were well received. My brother-in-law had not been able to come. Émile, my nephew, was alone, and he had naturally taken the best room in the house, by virtue of his right as first arrival. It was immediately pointed out to him that, being at the age when one can eat anything, he was also, naturally, at the age when one gets the worst beds and cold rooms. His room had a splendid fireplace, in which burned the remains of a fire which I tended with the conscientiousness of a vestal, until they brought a load of wood. It was a large room; we held council, and it was unanimously decided to carry the mattresses from the small rooms into the large one; that they should be arranged symmetrically against the wall, and that we should all sleep together. Émile demanded two things: the honour of being one of the company and the right of putting his ready-made bed on the floor. He had left a store of warmth in his sheets which he did not want to lose. These preliminary arrangements made, we proceeded to supper. Every one was literally dying of hunger, literally, also, there was equally nothing to eat in the inn. We visited the henhouse: the fowls had obligingly laid a score of eggs. That made four eggs apiece; we each had one egg boiled, two in an omelette and one in the salad. There was bread and wine as might be required. I think we never had a merrier supper-party or slept better. At dawn we were awakened by Gondon. He arrived thoroughly equipped for shooting, with his two dogs. Fifteen beaters, engaged the previous day,