uld not
write anything in the midst of all this disturbance; but she troubled
herself no more about me; she even smiled when the servant-girl asked
me if I had been out to dine. The whole household had become hostile
towards me. It was as if I had only needed disgrace of being obliged to
resign my room to a stranger to be treated as a man of no account. Even
the servant, a little, brown-eyed, street-wench, with a big fringe over
her forehead, and a perfectly flat bosom, poked fun at me in the
evening when I got my ration of bread and butter. She inquired
perpetually where, then, was I in the habit of dining, as she had never
seen me picking my teeth outside the Grand? It was clear that she was
aware of my wretched circumstances, and took a pleasure in letting me
know of it.

I fall suddenly into thought over all this, and am not able to find a
solitary speech for my drama. Time upon time I seek in vain; a strange
buzzing begins inside my head, and I give it up. I thrust the papers
into my pocket, and look up. The girl is sitting straight opposite me.
I look at her--look at her narrow back and drooping shoulders, that are
not yet fully developed. What business was it of hers to fly at me?
Even supposing I did come out of the palace, what then? Did it harm her
in any way? She had laughed insolently in the past few days at me, when
I was a bit awkward and stumbled on the stairs, or caught fast on a
nail and tore my coat. It was not later than yesterday that she
gathered up my rough copy, that I had thrown aside in the
ante-room--stolen these rejected fragments of my drama, and read them
aloud in the room here; made fun of them in every one's hearing, just
to amuse herself at my expense. I had never molested her in any way,
and could not recall that I had ever asked her to do me a service. On
the contrary, I made up my bed on the floor in the ante-room myself, in
order not to give her any trouble with it. She made fun of me, too,
because my hair fell out. Hair lay and floated about in the basin I
washed in the mornings, and she made merry over it. Then my shoes, too,
had grown rather shabby of late, particularly the one that had been run
over by the bread-van, and she found subject for jesting in them. "God
bless you and your shoes!" said she, looking at them; "they are as wide
as a dog's house." And she was right; they were trodden out. But then I
couldn't procure myself any others just at present.

Whilst I sit and call