In that silent hour Nature had drawn him into her wide embrace, lulling
him with a mother's gentleness; and now, in the moment of waking, it
seemed that again the same beneficent agency was dispensing love and
favor, for he opened his eyes upon a changed world. A magician's wand
had been waved over the city during his hours of sleep; the mist and
oppression of the night had disappeared with the darkness. Paris was
under the dominion of the frost.

Instinctively, even before his eyelids lifted, the northern soul within
him apprised him of this change. He inhaled the crisp coldness of the
air with a vague familiarity; he opened his eyes slowly and stared about
the unknown room in an instant of hesitating doubt; then, with a great
leap of the spirit, he recognized his position. Last night--the days and
nights that had preceded it--flooded his consciousness, and in a moment
he was out of bed and pulling back the drab-hued curtains that hid the
window.

Having freed the daylight, he leaned out, peering greedily down into the
well-like court, where even the stunted trees in their painted tubs were
coated white with rime; then, with another impulse, as quickly
conceived, as quickly executed, he drew back into the room, fired with
the desire to be out and about in this newly created world.

By day, the details of the room stood out with a prominence that had
been denied them in the dim candle-light of the night before, and he
realized now, what had escaped him then, that there was neither
dressing-table, wardrobe, nor chest of drawers, that the entire space of
the small apartment was filled by the clumsy bed, a folding wash-stand,
and two ponderous arm-chairs covered in shabby red velvet. These, with a
dingy gold-framed mirror hanging above the tiny corner fireplace, and a