m for his
person; not, however, leaving more than a yard of interval, just what
any reasonable man would have regarded as a convenient, respectful
allowance of bench. But M. Emanuel never _was_ reasonable; flint and
tinder that he was! he struck and took fire directly.

"Vous ne voulez pas de moi pour voisin," he growled: "vous vous donnez
des airs de caste; vous me traitez en paria;" he scowled. "Soit! je
vais arranger la chose!" And he set to work.

"Levez vous toutes, Mesdemoiselles!" cried he.

The girls rose. He made them all file off to the other table. He then
placed me at one extremity of the long bench, and having duly and
carefully brought me my work-basket, silk, scissors, all my implements,
he fixed himself quite at the other end.

At this arrangement, highly absurd as it was, not a soul in the room
dared to laugh; luckless for the giggler would have been the giggle. As
for me, I took it with entire coolness. There I sat, isolated and cut
off from human intercourse; I sat and minded my work, and was quiet,
and not at all unhappy.

"Est ce assez de distance?" he demanded.

"Monsieur en est l'arbitre," said I.

"Vous savez bien que non. C'est vous qui avez cree ce vide immense: moi
je n'y ai pas mis la main."

And with this assertion he commenced the reading.

For his misfortune he had chosen a French translation of what he called
"un drame de Williams Shackspire; le faux dieu," he further announced,
"de ces sots paiens, les Anglais." How far otherwise he would have
characterized him had his temper not been upset, I scarcely need
intimate.

Of course, the translation being French, was very inefficient; nor did
I make any particular effort to conceal the contempt which some of its
forlorn lapses were calculated to excite. Not that it behoved or
beseemed me to say anything: but one can occasionally _look_ the
opinion it is forbidden to embody in words. Monsieur's lunettes being
on the alert, he gleaned up every stray look; I don't think he lost
one: the consequence was, his eyes soon discarded a screen, that their
blaze might sparkle free, and he waxed hotter at the north pole to
which he had voluntarily exiled himself, than, considering the general
temperature of the room, it would have been reasonable to become under
the vertical ray of Cancer itself.

The reading over, it appeared problematic whether he would depart with
his anger unexpressed, or whether he would give it vent. Suppression
was n