aspect. The regular entrance was, as one might say, at the back,
which looked upon the street, or rather upon a little place, adorned
like every place in Geneva, great or small, with a fountain. This
fact was not prepossessing, for on crossing the threshold you found
yourself more or less in the kitchen, encompassed with culinary
odours. This, however, was no great matter, for at the Pension
Beaurepas there was no attempt at gentility or at concealment of the
domestic machinery. The latter was of a very simple sort. Madame
Beaurepas was an excellent little old woman--she was very far
advanced in life, and had been keeping a pension for forty years--
whose only faults were that she was slightly deaf, that she was fond
of a surreptitious pinch of snuff, and that, at the age of seventy-
three, she wore flowers in her cap. There was a tradition in the
house that she was not so deaf as she pretended; that she feigned
this infirmity in order to possess herself of the secrets of her
lodgers. But I never subscribed to this theory; I am convinced that
Madame Beaurepas had outlived the period of indiscreet curiosity.
She was a philosopher, on a matter-of-fact basis; she had been having
lodgers for forty years, and all that she asked of them was that they
should pay their bills, make use of the door-mat, and fold their
napkins. She cared very little for their secrets. "J'en ai vus de
toutes les couleurs," she said to me. She had quite ceased to care
for individuals; she cared only for types, for categories. Her large
observation had made her acquainted with a great number, and her mind
was a complete collection of "heads." She flattered herself that she
knew at a glance where to pigeon-hole a new-comer, and if she made
any mistakes her deportment never betrayed them. I think that, as
regards individuals, she had neither likes nor dislikes; but she was
capable of expressing esteem or contempt for a species. She had her
own ways, I suppose, of manifesting her approval, but her manner of