The man with the smooth hair had taken a seat in the corner at the end of the room. From time to time he cast a furtive glance about him; then he resumed his reading, but very quietly, without moving, without the slightest change of expression.
Just beyond him, a stupid faced man had been leaning over the same sheet for an interminable time; but he was not asleep, as I thought at first. That man was, so I was told, the terror of all reading rooms. He regularly took four hours to read an ordinary newspaper, and six to read the Moniteur. If those who let newspapers had many customers like him, they would have to charge by the hour, as at billiards.
I was about to return to my literary review, but my attention was distracted by a female voice which rang in my ears; anything of the feminine gender always distracts my attention. I instantly abandoned the regular customers of the reading room, and looked into the next room at the right, which was filled with tables covered with books; for at that establishment books as well as papers were let; and in truth it was wisely done, for in these days, in order to earn one’s living, it is none too much, in fact sometimes it is not enough, to do two things at once.
As I was standing between the two rooms, it was easy for me to look into the one devoted to books: I saw a woman of some twenty years, with a bright, wide-awake face. Her dress indicated that she lived near by; her head was uncovered; a black silk apron à corsage fitted her snugly; but her feet were in list slippers which were much too large for her, and she also had a thimble on one of her hands, which were covered with old gloves of which the fingers were cut off. She tripped in, smiling, and placed a package of books on the desk, saying:
“Here! we have devoured all these already!”
“What! why, you only got them yesterday!”
“Oh! we read fast at our house; my aunt doesn’t do anything else, and my sister has a sore thumb and couldn’t work; she often has a sore thumb, my sister has; and my brother much prefers reading novels to practising on the violin. I confess that I like it much better too, when he is not practising; it’s so tiresome to have a violin forever scraping in your ears; oh! it sets my teeth on edge just to think of it. I have a horror of a violin—What are you going to give me? We want something nice.”
“I don’t just know, you read so fast; before long you will have read all the books I have got.”
“We want something new.”
“New! that’s what all the subscribers say; they think that nothing is good except what is new; and yet we have some old novels which are far ahead of the modern ones. ”