The snow man

GEORGE SAND’S NOVELS
Handy Library Edition
THE SNOW MAN
The Race on the Ice
GEORGE SAND
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1870 , By Roberts Brothers.
Copyright, 1898 , By Little, Brown, and Company.
Printers S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A.
WILL the reader be kind enough to enter with us at once into the subject of this story, as he does when, in the theatre, the curtain rises upon a situation which the actors proceed to explain.
In the same way, we beg him to go with us straightway into the heart of the locality which is the scene of this narrative;—yet there is this difference, that in the theatre the curtain seldom rises upon an empty stage; while in the present instance, the narrator and the reader are to be for a few moments alone together.
The place into which we are thus conveyed, is sufficiently strange and not particularly agreeable. It is a four-sided room, at first sight apparently a regular square, but one of its angles is really more acute than the others, as we observe the moment we notice the dark-colored wooden ceiling whose projecting beams cross each other in a distinctly irregular manner in the north-east corner.