“Bah! you say that to get me to take your Cleveland, your Tom Jones and your old Doyen de Killerine again.”
“The Doyen de Killerine is a very good book, mademoiselle, and——”
“Madame, I don’t take any interest in a hunchback hero with crooked legs and patches over his eyes. No! no! what I like is a handsome young man, very dark and well-built, with a noble carriage; he is all right,—you can imagine him and fancy that you are looking at him. When he makes love, you say to yourself: ‘I’d like to have a lover like him;’ and there’s some pleasure in that.”
The proprietress smiled; I did the same, while pretending to be engrossed in my paper. The young woman fluttered from one table to another; she would take up a book, open it, then put it back on its shelf, saying:
“We have read this; we have read this. Bless my soul! have we read everything?”
“Here, mademoiselle,” said the woman who kept the room, “here’s something interesting and well written.”
“What is it?”
“La Femme de Bon Sens, ou La Prisonnière de Bohême.”
“Let’s see whom it is by: translated from the English by Ducos. Why, this was published in 1798! Are you making fun of me, to give me such an old novel as this?”
“What difference does it make how old it is, when I tell you that it is good?”