ttention to the detestable creature; but I was anxious to know what she
could want me to do for her. As soon as Madame Dubois had left the room
she told me straight out that she had come to ask me to let her have a
couple of rooms in my house for three weeks or a month at the most.

I was astonished at such a piece of impudence, and told her she asked
more than I was at liberty to give.

"You can't refuse me, as everybody knows I have come on purpose to ask
you."

"Then everybody must know that I have refused you. I want to be
alone--absolutely alone, without any kind of restriction on my liberty.
The least suspicion of company would bore me."

"I shall not bore you in any way, and you will be at perfect liberty to
ignore my presence. I shall not be offended if you don't enquire after
me, and I shall not ask after you--even if you are ill. I shall have my
meals served to me by my own servant, and I shall take care not to walk
in the garden unless I am perfectly certain you are not there. You must
allow that if you have any claims to politeness you cannot refuse me."

"If you were acquainted with the most ordinary rules of politeness,
madam, you would not persist in a request to which I have formally
declined to accede."

She did not answer, but my words had evidently produced no effect. I was
choking with rage. I strode up and down the room, and felt inclined to
send her away by force as a madwoman. However, I reflected that she had
relations in a good position whom I might offend if I treated her
roughly, and that I might make an enemy capable of exacting a terrible
revenge; and, finally, that Madame might disapprove of my using violence
to this hideous harpy....

"Well, madam," said I, "you shall have the apartment you have solicited
with so much importunity, and an hour after you come in I shall be on my
way back to Soleure."

"I accept the apartment, and I shall occupy it the day after to-morrow.
As for your threat of returning to Soleure, it is an idle one, as you
would thereby make yourself the laughing-stock of the whole town."

With this final impertinence she rose and went away, without taking any
further notice of me. I let her go without moving from my seat. I was
stupefied. I repented of having given in; such impudence was
unparalleled. I called myself a fool, and vowed I deserved to be publicly
hooted. I ought to have taken the whole thing as a jest; to have
contrived to get her out of the house o