repeated visits to Le Puy, and a deal of high living for myself and my
advisers, a sleeping-sack was designed, constructed, and triumphantly
brought home.

This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, exclusive of two
triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and as the top and bottom
of the sack by day. I call it 'the sack,' but it was never a sack by
more than courtesy: only a sort of long roll or sausage, green waterproof
cart-cloth without and blue sheep's fur within. It was commodious as a
valise, warm and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for
one; and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury myself
in it up to the neck; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, with a hood to
fold down over my ears and a band to pass under my nose like a
respirator; and in case of heavy rain I proposed to make myself a little
tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, three stones, and a bent
branch.

It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on
my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of
burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals, flighty, timid,
delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive
to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow
galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's
an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to the troubles of
the voyager. What I required was something cheap and small and hardy,
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites pointed to
a donkey.

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound intellect
according to some, much followed by street-boys, and known to fame as