A Winter Amid the Ice, and Other Thrilling Stories

o?" asked th

the counsellor, after s

t act hastily," resu

d the Counsellor Niklausse, "and I confess to you, my worthy Van Tr

a good quarter of an hour of reflection, "I quite understand it, and I fully share it. We

t this post of civil commissary is usele

never said, never would have dared to say, that anything is c

ounsellor nor the burgomaster moved so much as a finger, Niklausse asked Van Tricasse whether his predecessor--of some twenty years before--had not thought of

his ample brow; "but the worthy man died without having dared to make up his mind, either a

ble of originating any objectio

"without ever having decided upon anything during

A mouse would not have made less noise, running over a thick carpet. The door of the room opened, turning on its well-oiled hinges. A young girl, with long blonde tresses, made her appearance. It was Suzel Van Tric

d her fat

n hidden in a cloud of bluish smoke, leaving Counsel

the whole of one of the sides of the room; opposite to it was a trellised window, the painted glass of which toned down the brightness of the sunbeams. In an antique frame above the chimney-piece appeared the portrait of some worthy man, attribut

asylum, was not more silent than this mansion. Noise had no existence there; people did not walk, but glided about in it; they did not speak, they murmured. There was not, however, any lack of women in the house, which, in addition to the burgomaster Van Tricasse himself, sheltered his wife, Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse, his daughte

rinkle, would at once have betrayed to a physiognomist that the burgomaster Van Tricasse was phlegm personified. Never, either from anger or passion, had any emotion whatever hastened the beating of this man's heart, or flushed his face; never had his pupils contracted under the influence of any irritation, however ephemeral. He invariably wore good clothes, neither too large nor too small, which he never seemed to wear out. He was shod with large square shoes with triple soles and silver buckles, which lasted so long that his shoema

on attaining the utmost limit of human existence, after having, however, seen the good Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse, his wife, pre

ands exp

ht well call itself the "Je

eft a widower, had remarried a Van Tricasse younger than himself; who, becoming in turn a widow, had married again a Van Tricasse younger than herself; and so on, without a break in the continuity, from generation to generation. Each died in his or her turn with mechanical regularity. Thus the worthy Madame Brigitte Van Tricasse had now her second husband; and, unless she violated her every duty, would precede her spouse--he being ten years younger than herself--to the other world, to make room

itte Van Tricasse had