said,
smiling, as he placed an old folio, open, on a chair. Then he passed
into his bedroom. With a wet sponge he freshened up the marble of the
dresser, then he smoothed the bed cover, straightened his photographs
and engravings, and went into the bathroom. Here he paused,
disheartened. In a bamboo rack over the wash-bowl there was a chaos of
phials. Resolutely he grabbed the perfume bottles, scoured the bottoms
and necks with emery, rubbed the labels with gum elastic and bread
crumbs, then he soaped the tub, dipped the combs and brushes in an
ammoniac solution, got his vapourizer to working and sprayed the room
with Persian lilac, washed the linoleum, and scoured the seat and the
pipes. Seized with a mania for cleanliness, he polished, scrubbed,
scraped, moistened, and dried, with great sweeping strokes of the arm.
He was no longer vexed at the concierge; he was even sorry the old
villain had not left him more to do.

Then he shaved, touched up his moustache, and proceeded to make an
elaborate toilet, asking himself, as he dressed, whether he had better
wear button shoes or slippers. He decided that shoes were less familiar
and more dignified but resolved to wear a flowing tie and a blouse,
thinking that this artistic negligee would please a woman.

"All ready," he said, after a last stroke of the brush. He made the turn
of the other rooms, poked the fires, and fed the cat, which was running
about in alarm, sniffing all the cleaned objects and doubtless thinking
that those he rubbed against every day without paying any attention to
them had been replaced by new ones.

"Oh, the 'little essentials' I am forgetting!" Durtal put the teakettle
on the hob and placed cups, teapot, sugar bowl, cakes, bonbons, and tiny
liqueur glasses on an old lacquered "waiter" so as to have everything on
hand when it was time to serve.

"Now I'm through. I've given the place a thorough cleaning. Let her
come," he said to himself, realigning some books whose backs stuck out
further than the others on the shelves. "Everything in good shape.
Except the chimney of the lamp. Where it bulges, there are caramel
specks and blobs of soot, but I can't get the thing out; I don't want to
burn my fingers; and anyway, with the shade lowered a bit she won't
notice.

"Well, how shall I proceed when she does come?" he asked himself,
sinking into an armchair. "She enters. Good. I take her hands. I kiss
them. Then I bring her into this room. I have her