The Pension Beaurepas

by Henry James




CHAPTER I.



I was not rich--on the contrary; and I had been told the Pension
Beaurepas was cheap. I had, moreover, been told that a boarding-
house is a capital place for the study of human nature. I had a
fancy for a literary career, and a friend of mine had said to me, "If
you mean to write you ought to go and live in a boarding-house; there
is no other such place to pick up material." I had read something of
this kind in a letter addressed by Stendhal to his sister: "I have a
passionate desire to know human nature, and have a great mind to live
in a boarding-house, where people cannot conceal their real
characters." I was an admirer of La Chartreuse de Parme, and it
appeared to me that one could not do better than follow in the
footsteps of its author. I remembered, too, the magnificent
boarding-house in Balzac's Pere Goriot,--the "pension bourgeoise des
deux sexes et autres," kept by Madame Vauquer, nee De Conflans.
Magnificent, I mean, as a piece of portraiture; the establishment, as
an establishment, was certainly sordid enough, and I hoped for better
things from the Pension Beaurepas. This institution was one of the
most esteemed in Geneva, and, standing in a little garden of its own,
not far from the lake, had a very homely, comfortable, sociable