"Oh, you Frenchman!" the old woman would say, much affected.
My stepfather, as unmoved as if he were deaf or dumb, chewed his meat without looking at any one. One day the elder brother said to the younger: "Now that you are learning French, Victor, you ought to have a mistress."
This was the only time I remember seeing my stepfather smile quietly.
But the young mistress let her spoon fall on the table in her agitation, and cried to her husband:
"Are n't you ashamed to talk so disgustingly before me?"
Sometimes my stepfather came to me in the dark vestibule, where I slept under the stairs which led to the attic, and where, sitting on the stairs by the window, I used to read.
"Reading?" he would say, blowing out smoke. There came a hissing sound from his chest like the hissing of a fire-stick. "What is the book?"
I showed it to him.
"Ah," he said, glancing at the title, "I think I have read it. Will you smoke?"
We smoked, looking out of the window onto the dirty yard. He said: