Transcribed from the 1886 Macmillan and Co. edition. Scanned , . Proofing byEmma Hair, Francine Smith and Matthew Garrish.
I was not rich—on the contrary; and I had been told thePension Beaurepas was cheap. I had, moreover, been toldthat a boarding-house is a capital place for the study of humannature. I had a fancy for a literary career, and a friendof mine had said to me, “If you mean to write you ought togo and live in a boarding-house; there is no other such place topick up material.” I had read something of this kindin a letter addressed by Stendhal to his sister: “I have apassionate desire to know human nature, and have a great mind tolive in a boarding-house, where people cannot conceal their realcharacters.” I was an admirer of La Chartreuse deParme, and it appeared to me that one could not do betterthan follow in the footsteps of its author. I remembered,too, the magnificent boarding-house in Balzac’s PèreGoriot,—the “pension bourgeoise des deux sexes etautres,” kept by Madame Vauquer, née DeConflans. Magnificent, I mean, as a piece of portraiture;the establishment, as an establishment, was certainly sordidenough, and I hoped for better things from the PensionBeaurepas. This institution was one of the most esteemed inGeneva, and, standing in a little garden of its own, not far fromthe lake, had a very homely, comfortable, sociable aspect. The regular entrance was, as one might say, at the back, whichlooked upon the street, or rather upon a little place,adorned like every place in Geneva, great or small, with afountain. This fact was not prepossessing, for on crossingthe threshold you found yourself more or less in the kitchen,encompassed with culinary odours. This, however, was nogreat matter, for at the Pension Beaurepas there was no attemptat gentility or at concealment of the domestic machinery. The latter was of a very simple sort. Madame Beaurepas wasan excellent little old woman—she was very far advanced inlife, and had been keeping a pension for forty years—whoseonly faults were that she was slightly deaf, that she was fond ofa surreptitious pinch of snuff, and that, at the age ofseventy-three, she wore flowers in her cap. There was atradition in the house that she was not so deaf as she pretended;that she feigned this infirmity in order to possess herself ofthe secrets of her lodgers. But I never subscribed to thistheory; I am convinced that Madame Beaurepas had outlived theperiod of indiscreet curiosity. She was a philosopher, on amatter-of-fact basis; she had been having lodgers for fortyyears, and all that she asked of them was that they should paytheir bills, make use of the door-mat, and fold theirnapkins. She cared very little for their secrets. “J’en ai vus de toutes les couleurs,” she saidto me. She had quite ceased to care for individuals; shecared only for types, for categories. Her large observationhad made her acquainted with a great number, and her mind was acomplete collection of “heads.” She flatteredherself that she knew at a glance where to pigeon-hole anew-comer, and if she made any mistakes her deportment neverbetrayed them. I think that, as regards individuals, shehad neither likes nor dislikes; but she was capable of expressingesteem or contempt for a species. She had her own ways, Isuppose, of manifesting her approval, but her manner ofindicating the reverse was simple and unvarying. “Jetrouve que c’est dép