A Parisian Romance — page 107: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

98 A PARISIAN ROMANCE, table with a hand that trembled a little beneath his weight. “Confound it!” he muttered, half aloud. “My legs are frightfully shaky this morning, nerves all unstrung. It must be muggy out to-day. Every day that it is warm and close, I notice that my legs are bad.” | And he commenced stamping about the room to restore the circulation. Then, going to a magnifi- cent carved sideboard, he poured out half a glass of brandy, which he drank off at a gulp. This steadied him, somewhat, and he was teeling considerably better, when Ambroise returned bear- ing an absurdly small pair of dumb-bells, hardly larger than those used by a child. “Good!” said Chevrial. “Tell me, Ambroise, what sort of weather it is outside. Is it warm?” “No, monsieur. It is freezing.” “Freezing!” ejaculated the baron. “Humph! Humph! Then it must be the heat from those steam-pipes. There is nothing which enervates a man so as these confounded steam-pipes.” As he spoke, he threw off his dressing-gown, re- vealing as he did so a hollow chest and a very narrow pair of shoulders. He took a dumb-bell in each hand and raised them with evident effort half a dozen times above his head. Then, dropping them to his sides, he asked, gasping a little for breath: “Well, that is not so bad; is it? I am improving.” EGomicbooks.co