Volume I Part 33 (2/2)

She denied it most impudently, but was instantly dis been inforet another situation

MY LANDLADY

At that tis in the Rue des Saints-Peres

When o to Paris to continuediscussion about settling everything My allowance had been fixed at first at two thousand five hundred francs, but my poor mother was so anxious, that she said to ht not take enough to eat, and then my health would suffer, and so it was settled that a co-house should be found for me, and that the amount should be paid to the proprietor hihbors told us of a certain Maran, a native of Brittany, who took in boarders, and so ed matters by letter with this respectable person, at whose house I and aran was a woman of about forty She was very stout, had a voice like a drill-sergeant, and decided everything in a very abrupton to the street on each story, which rather gave it the appearance of a ladder of s, or better, perhaps, of a slice of a house sandwiched in between two others

The landlady lived on the first floor with her servant, the kitchen and dining-room were on the second, and four boarders from Brittany lived on the third and fourth, and I had two rooms on the fifth

A little dark corkscrew staircase led up to these attics All day long Maran was up and down these stairs like a captain on board shi+p

Ten ti everything, seeing that the beds were properly made, the clothes well brushed, if the attendance were all that it should be; in a word, she looked after her boarders like a mother, and better than a mother

I soon made the acquaintance of my four fellow-countrymen Tere medical and tere law students, but all impartially endured the landlady's despotic yoke They were as frightened of her as a boy robbing an orchard would be of a rural policeman

I, however, immediately felt that I wished to be independent; it is my nature to rebel I declared at once that I aran had fixed twelve o'clock at night as the li this she looked at me for a few moments, and then said:

”It is quite impossible; I cannot have Annette awakened at any hour of the night You can have nothing to do out-of-doors at such a ti to the law, she was obliged to open the door for et a policeet a bed at some hotel, at your expense, in which I shall be fully justified You will, therefore, be obliged either to open the door for hed in her face as I told her my conditions She could not speak for a otiate, but I was firreed that I should have a latchkey, onthat no one else should know it

My energy made such a wholesome impression on her that from that time she treated me with marked favor; she was h tenderness which was not at all unpleasing

Sometimes when I was in a jovial etting the box on the ears which she gave ed to duck h, her hand would pass over , while she would call after me:

”Oh! you wretch, I will pay you out for that”

However, we soon beca before I irl as employed in a shop, and whom I constantly met You knohat such sort of love affairs are in Paris One fine day, going to a lecture, youto work arm-in-arm with a friend You look at her and feel that pleasant little shock which the eye of so through the saain, and the next, and the succeeding days At last you speak, and the love affair follows its course just like an illness

Well, by the end of three weeks I was on that footing with Emma which precedes a fall The fall would indeed have taken place irl lived at hoo to an hotel I did not kno to e, but at last I took the desperate resolve to take her to ht at about eleven o'clock, under the pretense of giving her a cup of tea Maran alent to bed at ten, so that we could get in by o down again in an hour or two in the saood deal of entreaty on my part, Emma accepted my invitation

I did not spend a very pleasant day, for I was by no means easy in my mind I was afraid of coht I went into a cafe, and drank two cups of coffee, and three or four glasses of cognac, to give e, and when I heard the clock strike half-past ten, I went slowly to the place offors The nearer we got to the door the ht to aran is in bed already”

I said to Emma two or three times: