“Et vous, Mademoiselle? vous êtes proprette et douillette, et affreusement insensible, par-dessus le marché.”
“But, in short, Monsieur, now I think of it, you must live somewhere? Do tell me where; and what establishment of servants do you keep?”
With a fearful projection of the under-lip, implying an impetus of scorn the most decided, he broke out—
“Je vis dans un trou! I inhabit a den, Miss—a cavern, where you would not put your dainty nose. Once, with base shame of speaking the whole truth, I talked about my ‘study’ in that college: know now that this ‘study’ is my whole abode; my chamber is there and my drawing-room. As for my ‘establishment of servants’” (mimicking my voice) “they number ten; les voilà.”
And he grimly spread, close under my eyes, his ten fingers.
“I black my boots,” pursued he savagely. “I brush my paletôt.”
“No, Monsieur, it is too plain; you never do that,” was my parenthesis.
“Je fais mon lit et mon ménage; I seek my dinner in a restaurant; my supper takes care, of itself; I pass days laborious and loveless; nights long and lonely; I am ferocious, and bearded and monkish; and nothing now living in this world loves me, except some old hearts worn like my own, and some few beings, impoverished, suffering, poor in purse and in spirit, whom the kingdoms of this world own not, but to whom a will and testament not to be disputed has bequeathed the kingdom of heaven.”
“Ah, Monsieur; but I know!”
“What do you know? many things, I verily believe; yet not me, Lucy!”