While the gallery of halfpenny pictures made me happy all the year round, there was another entertainment which I found particularly attractive in winter, in frosty weather, when the snow lay long on the ground. Against the far wall stands the fire-place, as monumental in size as at my grandmother’s. Its arched cornice occupies the whole width of the room, for the enormous redoubt fulfils more than one purpose. In the middle is the hearth, but on the right and the left are two breast-high recesses, half wood and half stone. Each of them is a bed, with a mattress stuffed with husks of winnowed corn. Two sliding boards serve as shutters and close the chest if the sleeper would be alone. This dormitory, sheltered under the chimney breast, supplies couches for the favoured ones of the house, the boarders. They must lie snug in them at night, when the north wind howls at the mouth of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl. The rest is occupied by the hearth and its accessories: the three-legged stools; the salt-box, hanging against the wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel which it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows, similar to those with which I used to blow out my cheeks in grandfather’s house. They consist of a big branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length with a red-hot iron. By means of this channel one’s breath is applied, from a convenient distance, to the spot which is to be revived. With a couple of stones for supports, the master’s bundle of sticks and our own logs blaze and flicker, for each of us has to bring a log of wood in the morning, if he would share in the treat. Nevertheless, the fire was not exactly lit for us, but, most of all, to warm a row of three pots in which simmered the pigs’ food, a mixture of potatoes and bran. That, despite the tribute of a log, was the real object of the brushwood fire. The two boarders, on their stools, in the best places, and we others, sitting on our heels, formed a semicircle around those big cauldrons full to the brim and giving off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-puffing sounds. The bolder among us, when the master’s eyes were engaged elsewhere, would dig a knife into a well-cooked potato and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, if we did little work at my school, at least we did a deal of eating. It was the regular custom to crack a few nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our page or setting out our rows of figures.