This morning I was interested in watching the gambols of an ermine which had just captured a small black mammal. Supple, slim, and snake-like, it sat up from time to time to look around. It was hard to distinguish, despite its black tail-tip, from the surrounding snow, though this had a bluish tint in contrast with the ermine’s fur, in which there were subtle shades of green. I stood motionless on the footpath, wrapped in the soft cloak which Mme. Paul Weiss has just sent me. The little beast advanced fearlessly towards me, joyously shaking the prey that it carried in its jaws. Did it take me for a tree? I move my barberry switch. The ermine stops. Sitting up, it looks at me for a long time. How pretty it is, slender and graceful! I think of Musette, a black English greyhound, with perfect points, which won the first prize at Lyons, and was the delight of my eyes for three years. Dear Musette! We were always together. The first time we were parted she died. Madeleine, my favourite little sister, was charged with giving me the news. She wrote me a letter of eight pages. I still recall her great childish handwriting. Her kind heart had inspired the most touching precautions, and suggested the use of angelic phraseology. “We have buried her,” she wrote in conclusion, “in that corner of the garden you are so fond of, beneath the oleanders.” I continue to look at the ermine, but the animal is doubtless ready for breakfast. Evading the danger, it descends the slope, gains the traverse, and runs restlessly to and fro. I trouble it. Most probably I am between it and its earth. I go. As I make my way on to the escarp I meet Noverraz, the Parisian, the hero of the look-out episode. He is taking a constitutional in the snow. His waxen skin, pinched by the cold, has red patches on it. His ears and the tip of his nose are scarlet. “Where have you been?” he inquires. “Beyond the slopes. I must have walked quite a league this morning. It was glorious!” “Take care, old chap, if you value a whole skin.” “Bah!”