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"," said Paul, as he followed Constance out of her own sitting-room, while she, with her key-basket over her arm, went down the stairs with Marietje and Gerdy, "yes, I'm not ashamed to confess it: I've come to see how the country suits me. The Hague is becoming so dirty that I can't stand it any longer. What a dirty place a town is! It's much cleaner in the country. . . . You're fortunate, you people. But I daresay I should have stayed on at the Hague—I'm not really a man for the country—if my landlady wasn't getting so old, if she wasn't always changing the servants, if those servants weren't so unspeakably slovenly and dirty. . . . She produced such specimens lately that I gave her notice. . . . I'd had those rooms fourteen years. . . . It'll be a great change for me. . . . But I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to see to everything myself; and I'm getting too old for that. . . . Yes, I still do my wash-hand-stand myself. . . . But look here, Constance, when it came to making my bed—because the servant's hands were dirty and my sheets one night smelt of onions—you know, that was really too much to expect. I'm no longer a young man: I'm forty-six. Yes, that's right, you young baggages, laugh at your old uncle! I'm forty-six, forty-six. Lord, what a lot of dirt I've seen in those years! . . . As the years go by, filth heaps itself around you like a mountain: there's no getting through it. Politics, people, servants, bedclothes, everything you eat, everything you touch, everything you do, say, think or feel: