The home life of the little _bourgeoise_ is a strange and a dull one. She possesses a house, one wonders why, when a bedroom seems to be all that she requires. She lives in her bedroom as Englishwomen of the same class live in their parlours. That a _salon_ was made for use, to be sat in and worked in and talked in, never enters her head. She uses her dining-room only for meals, and thus never has any fire in it during the winter, does not dream of lighting the stove which every French _salle à manger_ has, however small. She puts on a shawl to go into lunch and dinner. The _salon_ is hermetically sealed all the week, and opened gingerly should she have an at-home day; if not, it is opened only when some very important visitors call. I have known a little _bourgeoise_, whose “paying guest” I, for my misfortune, happened to be, who allowed the inmates of her establishment to pass into the _salon_ after dinner for exactly an hour. At nine o’clock she rose and graciously dismissed us from the sacred precincts, bidding us disperse to our chambers, while she locked up the holy of holies. Here, as elsewhere, I discovered that such a thing as a comfortable chair or sofa is unknown, undreamed of by the little _bourgeoise_. To do her justice, she never lounges herself, and consequently does not understand the need. This is the admirable side of her character,—the complete absence of self-indulgence. She swindles you, not for her comfort, but for the security of her old age. She is circumspect and formal in all her attitudes, absolutely self-respecting, of a cordial coldness, and there is something impersonal, something claustral in her selfishness. I have remarked that nuns resemble her astonishingly in all their material relations with the world: the same implacable hardness, the same smiling austerity, the same lack of honesty or of consideration for others, the same resolute determination to get the best of outsiders in the matter of labour or bargains, to give as little and obtain as much as possible in all transactions, to underfeed, underpay, and overwork,—and all with the same high air of self-approval and righteousness.