"I have been where I chose to go, and it is none of your business," replied the tenant, in a tone which did not invite further conversation. "Well! what about my light? Are you going to give it to me to-night? or do you intend to keep me waiting here as long as you did in the street?"
"What, Hildegarde, haven't you lighted Monsieur Malberg's light yet? Look here, what are you about? God forgive me, Monsieur Malberg, but I believe that my wife is getting deaf or idiotic; something's the matter with her to-night; it isn't possible--yes, she may have been tippling. You know her unlucky failing, which will lead her to perdition! and it isn't for lack of my trying to correct it by every means that I can think of."
Whereupon Hildegarde, who had her reasons for not stirring from her chair, made haste to reply:
"Oh, yes! the means you use are very nice! I advise you to boast of them; you ought to be ashamed of them! a man with an education, who has clerks under him, in an office, to raise his hand to his wife! Yes, Monsieur Malberg, I don't blush to confess that Monsieur Baudoin has the baseness to strike me! that's a nice thing to do, ain't it?"
But the man to whom these questions were addressed, observing that no one thought of giving him his light, pushed open the door of the lodge, took his candlestick, lighted the candle with a piece of paper, and went upstairs without another word to the concierge and his wife, who continued their conversation.
"Well, Hildegarde, do you see what you've done? Here's Monsieur Malberg had to light his candle himself! what will he think of us?"
"Oh! I don't care what he thinks! he's an agreeable man, that tenant! a fellow who never talks, who hardly answers when you speak to him, and always in a short, surly tone, as if he was always angry!"
"It is true that he seldom laughs; but still perhaps that's his nature; there are people who enjoy being dismal. However, he's a man who occupies an apartment at eleven hundred francs, and who pays on the dot, without having to be reminded that it is rent day, and who has very handsome furniture, and mirrors in every room, so that the proprietor has a very high regard for him."
"Oh! I don't say that he's a vagabond! but why doesn't he keep a maid, who'd come to our lodge in the evening and talk, as decent people always do, instead of that miserable blackamoor, that yellow negro, who doesn't know how to do anything but wax his floor and polish his boots? as if you could call that a servant! He ought to hire me to do his housework; that's my line!"