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90 too preoccupied, or that I myself, as I grew older, had made more progress in the art of hypocrisy, I cannot tell; at any rate they merely asked me about my uncle and aunt, looked at the book I had received, and sent me to bed. My first act while Miette lighted the candle was to wrap the piece of gold in my handkerchief. I slipped it under my pillow so that when she undressed me my good nurse should not discover it. She took off my clothes as usual, and made me kneel down at the foot of the bed to say my prayers. She herself took my shoe and placed it in a corner of the fireplace to receive my Christmas presents. The wind had risen. It began to blow about the Place d'Armes with the mutterings that you and I have so often listened to together. Why should Miette, who never uttered twenty words an hour, suddenly say to me: 'Think of the poor folks who have no shelter on such a night as this!' So saying, she took the copper warming-pan out of my bed. The window curtains were drawn, the fire burned clear, in short, everything in my room told of the comfortable life I was then living with my dear sister Blanche. It was not the first time that a feeling of profound security, made tangible by the sight of these familiar objects, swelled my heart delightfully; but now, as I slid between the well-warmed sheets, instead of clinging to that feeling I