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 depths of winter, I really meant only to put up a mere shed, a sort of rabbit hutch, where I could live alone. I am sociable enough, but I like to choose my own time and place, and I am also a talker, but sometimes Breugnon seems to me the best companion in the world, and I would walk ten miles to get at him. It was, therefore, for the sake of enjoying my own charming society that I was obstinately bent on building, in spite of the opinion of the world and the remonstrances of my children.

Unluckily, I was not to have the last word, for, one frosty morning at the end of October, when the roofs of the town and the pavements were all covered with a thin glare of ice, I slipped on one of the rungs of my ladder and the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground.

"He has killed himself!" cried poor Binet, as he ran to pick me up.

"I did it on purpose," said I and tried to rise, but I could not stand as my ankle was broken.

They fetched a stretcher and carried me home, Martine and most of her neighbors by my side, wringing their hands and bewailing my sad fate. It was like an Entombment by an early master, with the Marys surrounding the body and making noise enough to wake Him.