Impossible To Say Too Much Of This Good
Dame's Solicitude For Me.
Her main object in life seems to be to save my
money and make me comfortable.
"Don't get your shoes soled there!" she
told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better
place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will
pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she
forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known
my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have
known them at the end of a century....
My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally
efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the
familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair
and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave
me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I
used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods
enlivened with steely glints of humour - such were the feelings of those
who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would
be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet
she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams
that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police
functionary and greatly in favour with his set - a most useful landlady,
in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 96 of 291
Words from 25214 to 25487
of 77809
