"Why don't you get a portable stove?"
"Oh, heavens! that would asphyxiate us."
"It wouldn't be very comfortable at any rate," said Des Hermies, "for there is no chimney. You might get some joints of pipe and run them out of the window, the way you have fixed this tubing. But, speaking of that kind of apparatus, Durtal, doesn't it seem to you that those hideous galvanized iron contraptions perfectly typify our utilitarian epoch?
"Just think, the engineer, offended by any object that
hasn't a sinister or ignoble form, reveals himself entire in this invention. He tells us, 'You want heat. You shall have heat—and nothing else.' Anything agreeable to the eye is out of the question. No more snapping, crackling wood fire, no more gentle, pervasive warmth. The useful without the fantastic. Ah, the beautiful jets of flame darting out from a red cave of coals and spurting up over a roaring log."
"But there are lots of stoves where you can see the fire," objected madame.
"Yes, and then it's worse yet. Fire behind a grated window of mica. Flame in prison. Depressing! Ah, those fine fires of faggots and dry vine stocks out in the country. They smell good and they cast a golden glow over everything. Modern life has set that in order. The luxury of the poorest of peasants is impossible in Paris except for people who have copious incomes."
The bell-ringer entered. Every hair of his bristling moustache was beaded with a globule of snow. With his knitted bonnet, his sheepskin coat, his fur mittens and goloshes, he resembled a Samoyed, fresh from the pole.
"I won't shake hands," he said, "for I am covered with grease and oil. What weather! Just think, I've been scouring the bells ever since early this morning. I'm worried about them."
"Why?"