safe with a secret lock, which has served as my
pantry during the four years, or nearly that, of my employment in the
_Territoriale_; suddenly the Governor enters the office, red as a
turkey-cock, his eyes inflamed as if he were fresh from a feast,
breathing noisily, and says to me in vulgar phrase, with his Italian
accent:

"There's a horrible smell here, _Moussiou_ Passajon."

There was not a horrible smell, if you please. But--shall I say it?--I
had sent out for a few onions to put around a bit of knuckle of veal,
brought down to me by Mademoiselle Seraphine, the cook on the second
floor, whose accounts I write up every evening. I tried to explain to
the Governor; but he worked himself into a rage, saying that in his
opinion there was no sense in poisoning offices in that way, and that
it wasn't worth while to pay twelve thousand francs a year for a suite
of rooms with eight windows on the front, in the best part of Boulevard
Malesherbes, to cook onions in. I don't know what he didn't say to me
in his effervescent state. For my part, I was naturally vexed to be
spoken to in that insolent tone. The least one can do is to be polite
to people whom one neglects to pay, deuce take it! So I retorted that
it was too bad, really; but, if the _Caisse Territoriale_ would pay
what they owe me, to wit my arrears of salary for four years, plus
seven thousand francs advanced by me to the Governor to pay for
carriages, newspapers, cigars and American drinks on the days the
council met, I would go and eat like a Christian at the nearest cheap
alehouse, and should not be reduced to cooking for myself, in the
directors' room, a wretched stew which I owed to the public compassion
of cooks. And there you are!

In speaking thus I gave way to an indignant impulse very excusable in
the eyes of anybody who is acquainted with my position here. However, I
had said nothing unseemly, but had kept within the limits of language
suited to my age and education. (I must have stated somewhere in these
memoirs that I passed more than thirty of my sixty-five years as
apparitor to the Faculty of Letters at Dijon. Hence my taste for
reports and memoirs, and those notions of academic style of which
traces will be found in many passages of this lucubration.) I had, I
repeat, expressed myself to the Governor with the greatest reserve,
refraining from employing any of those insulting words with which every
one here regales him during the day, from our tw