of black
bread, and some tea in a pot. From under the bed there protruded an
open portmanteau full of bundles of rags. In a word, the confusion and
untidiness of the room were indescribable.

"It appeared to me, at the first glance, that both the man and the woman
were respectable people, but brought to that pitch of poverty where
untidiness seems to get the better of every effort to cope with it, till
at last they take a sort of bitter satisfaction in it. When I entered
the room, the man, who had entered but a moment before me, and was still
unpacking his parcels, was saying something to his wife in an excited
manner. The news was apparently bad, as usual, for the woman began
whimpering. The man's face seemed tome to be refined and even pleasant.
He was dark-complexioned, and about twenty-eight years of age; he wore
black whiskers, and his lip and chin were shaved. He looked morose, but
with a sort of pride of expression. A curious scene followed.

"There are people who find satisfaction in their own touchy feelings,
especially when they have just taken the deepest offence; at such
moments they feel that they would rather be offended than not. These
easily-ignited natures, if they are wise, are always full of remorse
afterwards, when they reflect that they have been ten times as angry as
they need have been.

"The gentleman before me gazed at me for some seconds in amazement,
and his wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly
extraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But
suddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter
more than a couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was
decently dressed and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared
enter his den so unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and untidiness
of it.

"Of course he was delighted to get hold of someone upon whom to vent his
rage against things in general.

"For a moment I thought he would assault me; he grew so pale that he
looked like a woman about to have hysterics; his wife was dreadfully
alarmed.

"'How dare you come in so? Be off!' he shouted, trembling all over with
rage and scarcely able to articulate the words. Suddenly, however, he
observed his pocketbook in my hand.

"'I think you dropped this,' I remarked, as quietly and drily as I
could. (I thought it best to treat him so.) For some while he stood
before me in downright terror, and seemed unable to understan