In this fashion I learned to understand what a great treat a "good and proper" book can be. But how to find it? The tailor's wife could not help me in this. "Here is a good book," she said, laying before me Arsène Huissier's "Hands full of Roses, Gold, and Blood." She also gave me the novels of Beyle, Paul de Kock and Paul Féval, and I read them all with relish. She liked the novels of Mariette and Vernier, which to me appeared dull. I did not care for Spielhagen, but I was much taken with the stories of Auerbach. Sue and Huga, also, I did not like, preferring Walter Scott. I wanted books which excited me, and made me feel happy, like wonderful Balzac. I did not care for the porcelain woman as much as I had done at first. When I went to see her, I put on a clean shirt, brushed my hair, and tried to appear good-looking. In this I was hardly successful. I always hoped that, seeing my good looks, she would speak to me in a simple and friendly manner, without that hsh-like smile on her frivolous face. But all she did was to smile and ask me in her sweet, tired voice: "Have you read it? Did you like it?" "No." Slightly raising her eyebrows, she looked at me, and, drawing in her breath, spoke through her nose. "But why?" "I have read about all that before." "Above what?" "About love." Her eyes twinkled, as she burst out into her honeyed laugh. "_Ach_, but you see all books are written about love!" Sitting in a big arm-chair, she swung her small feet, incased in fur slippers, to and fro, yawned, wrapped her blue dressing-gown around her, and drummed with her pink fingers on the cover of the book on her knee. I wanted to say to her: "Why don't you leave this flat? The officers write letters to you, and laugh at you." But I had not the audacity to say this, and went away, bearing with me a thick book on "Love," a sad sense of disenchantment in my heart. They talked about this woman in the yard more evilly, derisively, and spitefully than ever. It offended me to hear these foul and, no doubt, lying stories. When I was away from her, I pitied the woman, and suffered for her; but when I was with her, and saw her small, sharp eyes, the cat-like flexibility of her small body, and that always frivolous face, pity and fear disappeared, vanished like smoke. In the spring she suddenly went away, and in a few days her husband moved to new quarters. While the rooms stood empty, awaiting a new tenant, I went to look at the bare walls, with their square patches where pictures had hung, bent nails, and wounds made by nails. Strewn about the stained floor were pieces of different-colored cloth, balls of paper, broken boxes from the chemist, empty scent-bottles. A large brass pin gleamed in one spot. All at once I felt sad and wished that I could see the tailor's little wife once more to tell her how grateful I was to her. CHAPTER X