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Kergaran had fixed twelve o'clock at night as the limit. On hearing this she looked at me for a few moments, and then said: "It is quite impossible; I cannot have Annette awakened at any hour of the night. You can have nothing to do out-of-doors at such a time." I replied firmly that, according to the law, she was obliged to open the door for me at any time.
The landlady lived on the first floor with her servant, the kitchen and dining-room were on the second, and four boarders from Brittany lived on the third and fourth, and I had two rooms on the fifth. A little dark corkscrew staircase led up to these attics. All day long Mme. Kergaran was up and down these stairs like a captain on board ship.
Kergaran stood by motionless, with the candle in her hand, looking at us with the severity of a judge. As soon as Emma was dressed, without even stopping to button her boots, she rushed past the landlady and ran down stairs. I followed her in my slippers and half undressed, and kept repeating: "Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle!"
Kergaran was waiting on the first landing, and I went up slowly, expecting, and ready for, anything. Her door was open, and she called me in, saying in a severe voice: "I want to speak to you, M. Kervelen." I went in, with my head bent.
The nearer we got to the door the more nervous I got, and I thought to myself "If only Mme. Kergaran is in bed already." I said to Emma two or three times: "Above all things, don't make any noise on the stairs," to which she replied, laughing: "Are you afraid of being heard?" "No," I said, "but I am afraid of waking the man who sleeps in the room next to me, who is not at all well."
Kergaran appeared with a candle in her hand, in exactly the same costume as Emma. I jumped away from her and remained standing up, looking at the two women, who were looking at each other. What was going to happen? My landlady said, in a lofty tone of voice which I had never heard from her before: "Monsieur Kervelen, I will not have prostitutes in my house."
She put her candle on the mantelpiece, and then, folding her arms over her expansive bosom, which a fine white dressing-jacket hardly covered, she said: "So, Monsieur Kervelen, you think my house is a house of ill-fame?" I was not at all proud. I murmured: "Oh, dear, no! But, Mme. Kergaran, you must not be angry; you know what young men are."
"But, Madame Kergaran," I stammered, "the young lady is a friend of mine. She just came in to have a cup of tea." "People don't take tea in their chemise. You will please make this person go directly." Emma, in a natural state of consternation, began to cry, and hid her face in her petticoat, and I lost my head, not knowing what to do or say.
Some of our neighbors told us of a certain Mme. Kergaran, a native of Brittany, who took in boarders, and so my father arranged matters by letter with this respectable person, at whose house I and my luggage arrived one evening. Mme. Kergaran was a woman of about forty. She was very stout, had a voice like a drill-sergeant, and decided everything in a very abrupt manner.
I did not know how to manage, but at last I took the desperate resolve to take her to my room some night at about eleven o'clock, under the pretense of giving her a cup of tea. Mme. Kergaran always went to bed at ten, so that we could get in by means of my latchkey without exciting any attention, and go down again in an hour or two in the same way.
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