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The cold on the 8th of February, 186-, was more intense than the
Parisians had experienced during the whole of the severe winter
which had preceded it, for at twelve o'clock on that day
Chevalier's thermometer, so well known by the denizens of Paris,
registered three degrees below zero. The sky was overcast and full
of threatening signs of snow, while the moisture on the pavement
and roads had frozen hard, rendering traffic of all kinds
exceedingly hazardous. The whole great city wore an air of
dreariness and desolation, for even when a thin crust of ice covers
the waters of the Seine, the mind involuntarily turns to those who
have neither food, shelter, nor fuel. This bitterly cold day
actually made the landlady of the Hotel de Perou, though she was a
hard, grasping woman of Auvergne, gave a thought to the condition
of her lodgers, and one quite different from her usual idea of
obtaining the maximum of rent for the minimum of accommodation.
"The cold," remarked she to her husband, who was busily engaged in
replenishing the stove with fuel, "is enough to frighten the wits
out of a Polar bear. In this kind of weather I always feel very
anxious, for it was during a winter like this that one of our
lodgers hung himself, a trick which cost us fifty francs, in good,
honest money, besides giving us a bad name in the neighborhood.
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