In sober truth my soul remained in revolt though I was convinced that I was no longer dreaming.  I watched Therese coming away from the window with that helpless dread a man bound hand and foot may be excused to feel.  For in such a situation even the absurd may appear ominous.  She came up close to the bed and folding her hands meekly in front of her turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

“If I had been her daughter she couldn’t have spoken more softly to me,” she said sentimentally.

I made a great effort to speak.

“Mademoiselle Therese, you are raving.”

“She addressed me as Mademoiselle, too, so nicely.  I was struck with veneration for her white hair but her face, believe me, my dear young Monsieur, has not so many wrinkles as mine.”

She compressed her lips with an angry glance at me as if I could help her wrinkles, then she sighed.

“God sends wrinkles, but what is our face?” she digressed in a tone of great humility.  “We shall have glorious faces in Paradise.  But meantime God has permitted me to preserve a smooth heart.”

“Are you going to keep on like this much longer?” I fairly shouted at her.  “What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the sweet old lady who came in a carriage.  Not a fiacre.  I can tell a fiacre.  In a little carriage shut in with glass all in front.  I suppose she is very rich.  The carriage was very shiny outside and all beautiful grey stuff inside.  I opened the door to her myself.  She got out slowly like a queen.  I was struck all of a heap.  Such a shiny beautiful little carriage.  There were blue silk tassels inside, beautiful silk tassels.”

Obviously Therese had been very much impressed by a brougham, though she didn’t know the name for it.  Of all the town she knew nothing but the streets which led to a neighbouring church frequented only by the poorer classes and the humble quarter around, where she did her marketing.  Besides, she was accustomed to glide along the walls with her eyes cast down; for her natural boldness would never show itself through that nun-like mien except when bargaining, if only on a matter of threepence.  Such a turn-out had never been presented to her notice before.  The traffic in the street of the Consuls was mostly pedestrian and far from fashionable.  And anyhow Therese never looked out of the window.  She lurked in the depths of the house like some kind of spider that shuns attention.  She used to dart at one from some dark recesses which I never explored.

Yet it seemed to me that she exaggerated her raptures for some reason or other.  With her it was very difficult to distinguish between craft and innocence.

“Do you mean to say,” I asked suspiciously, “that an old lady wants to hire an apartment here?  I hope you told her there was no room, because, you know, this house is not exactly the thing for venerable old ladies.”