Page:The Siege of London, The Pension Beaurepas, and The Point of View (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1883).djvu/250

240 an individual, though, among the agitations of pension-life, I have sometimes needed all my energy to uphold them. "Oh, yes, I may be poor," I have had occasion to say, "I may be unprotected, I may be reserved, I may occupy a small apartment in the quatrième, and be unable to scatter unscrupulous bribes among the domestics; but at least I am a person, with personal rights." In this country the people have rights, but the person has none. You would have perceived that if you had come with me to make arrangements at this establishment. The very fine lady who condescends to preside over it kept me waiting twenty minutes, and then came sailing in without a word of apology. I had sat very silent, with my eyes on the clock; Aurora amused herself with a false admiration of the room,—a wonderful drawing-room, with magenta curtains, frescoed walls, and photographs of the landlady's friends—as if one cared anything about her friends! When this exalted personage came in, she simply remarked that she had just been trying on a dress—that it took so long to get a skirt to hang. "It seems to take very long, indeed!" I answered. "But I hope the skirt is right at last. You might have sent for us to come up and look at it!" She evidently didn't understand, and when I asked her to show us her rooms, she handed us over to a negro as dégingandé as herself. While we looked at them, I heard her sit down to the piano in the drawing-room; she began to sing an air from a comic opera. I began to fear we had gone quite astray; I did n't