Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/230

 do with a broken-down aristocrat, there reigned, instead of the beaming cordiality of the bourgeoise, an awful, desperate, glacial reserve. The baroness' attitude to life may be described fitly as resembling her attitude to the late lamented poet, whom she apostrophised stiffly as Monsieur de Lamartine. She was frightfully dignified, even in starving her unfortunate paying guest on twelve pounds a month. It is true, paying guests are not infrequently regarded by ladies as creatures predestined to starvation and prompt payment in their hands, and in business matters I can safely say, from singularly sharp experience, that there are no more heartless and rapacious landladies on the face of the earth than needy and educated women. The greed of the common woman runs to pence, while that of the lady runs to shillings; and whereas the former, when she is dishonest, has a lingering consciousness of it, and flies into a wholesome rage on detection, the latter is armoured in the brass of breeding, and looks cool and surprised that you should object to being fleeced by her. Upon any approach to complaint, instead of excuses, she shows you cynically that she took you in in order to fleece you. A French "woman of letters," in the lowest acceptance of that unpleasing term, the old, semi-extinguished type of bluestocking, once told me that she always calculated on making a clear profit of two hundred