my two friends, I could not help at times thinking the north wind sharp
and the rain cold when the months came along which the Republican
calendar named so appropriately the months of mist, of frost, of rain,
of wind, of snow (brumaire, frimaire, pluviôse, ventôse, nivôse), so I
purchased a small blue coupé, lined with white reps, which was likened
to the equipage of the famous dwarf of the day, a piece of impertinence
I did not mind. A brown coupé, lined with garnet, followed the blue one,
and was itself replaced by a dark-green coupé lined with dark blue, for
I actually did sport a coach--I, poor newspaper writer holding no
Government stock--for five or six years. And my ponies were none the
less fat and in good condition though they were fed on literature, had
substantives for oats, adjectives for hay, and adverbs for straw. But
alas! there came, no one knows very well why, the Revolution in
February; a great many paving-stones were picked up for patriotic
purposes, and Paris became rather unfit for carriage travel. I could of
course have escaladed the barricades with my agile steeds and my light
equipage, but it was only at the cook-shop that I could get credit, and
I could not possibly feed my horses on roast chicken. The horizon was
dark with heavy clouds, through which flashed red gleams. Money had
taken fright and gone into hiding; the _Presse_, on the staff of which I
was, had suspended publication, and I was glad enough to find a person
willing to buy my horses, harness, and carriages for a fourth of their
value. It was a bitter grief to me, and I would not venture to say that
no tears ran down my cheeks on to the manes of Jane and Blanche when
they were led away. Sometimes their new owner would drive past the
house; I always knew their quick, sharp trot at a distance, and always
the sudden way they would stop under my windows proved that they had not
forgotten the place where they had been so tenderly loved and so well
cared for, and a sigh would break responsive from me as I said to
myself: "Poor Jane, poor Blanche! I wonder if they are happy."
And the loss of them is the one and only thing I felt sore over when I
lost my slender fortune.
Transcriber's Note
The following typographical error was corrected.
286 scissors cut changed to scissors, cut
End of Project Gutenberg's My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier