"_Je serais chez moi_," was now her argument, and for food she could continue to work or beg. He would be a convenience, _voila tout_. The Italian stayed a week. He lounged in bed all morning while she was at work, he smoked all afternoon. At the end of the week Clementine sent him flying. "_Je suis bete et je mourrais bete_," was her explanation to me; but she was not _bete_ to the point of adding an idle fourth to her burden, and, as a result, being turned out of the home she had taken him in to preserve. Clementine had been with us more than two years when the incident of the Italian occurred, and by this time I had become so accustomed to her and to her adventures that I was not as shocked as perhaps I should have been. It was not a way out of difficulties I could approve, but Clementine was not to be judged by my standards, and I saw no reason to express my disapproval by getting rid of her just when she most needed to stay. In her continually increasing need to stay, I endured so much besides that, at the end of her third year in our chambers, I was convinced that she would go on doing my rough work as long as I had rough work to be done. More than once I came to the end of my patience and dismissed her. But it was no use. In the course of a couple of weeks, or at the most three, she was back scrubbing my floors and polishing my brasses. The first time she lost her place with me, I sympathized to such an extent that I was at some pains to arrange a scheme to send her to France. But Clementine, clinging to the pleasures of life in the Lower Marsh, agreed to everything I proposed, and was careful to put every hindrance in the way of carrying out my plans. Twice I went to the length of engaging another woman, but either the other woman did not suit or else she did not stay, and I had to ask Clementine to return. On her side, she made various efforts to leave me, bored, I fancy, by the monotony of regular work, but they were as unsuccessful as mine to turn her off. After one disappearance of three weeks, she owned up frankly to having been again _chez les femmes_ whose pay was better; after a second, she said she had been ill in the workhouse which I doubted; after all, she was as frank in admitting that nowhere else did she enjoy _la bonne cuisine de Madame_, and that this was the attraction to which I was indebted for her fidelity.