"We have a little apartment," I said, "bedroom and living-room combined, a very small dining-room and a kitchen. I expect to buy the baby's crib and mattress aside, but the rest must come out of five hundred francs--I mean all of it. What can you give us for that?"
I often think the French are essentially poor salesmen. They do not know how to show their goods and they are too indifferent or too anxious. But the blessed virtue of chivalry! The blessed sense of proportion! The blessed instinct of moderation! Our furniture man rose to the occasion with a grace that made me want to hug him. He kept his smile and bow and changed with perfect ease from Louis and Napoleons to pitchpine. It would require figuring. But it could be done. Yes, of course it could be done. Down into the cellar he took us, and in half an hour he had arranged to give us all we needed for Francs 532.70. I remember those figures. And he agreed to take the whole lot back at half-price at the end of a year!
The furniture man bore a striking resemblance to some one I knew. I watched him, and tried to place him, as he made out our bill in the office--seven square feet of glassed-in suffocation surrounded by _armoires_ and buffets. Dust clung to pages and blotters and yellowing files; no air ever came in here to blow it away. Where had I seen the double of our friend? Full forehead, closely-trimmed, pointed beard, soft black tie--and the eyes. Where _had_ I seen him before? Writing with flourishes in purple ink, slightly bending over the high desk, he certainly fitted into some memory picture. Then it came to me! His pen ought to be a quill. It was William Shakespeare.
My husband did not think I was crazy. For he was looking at the furniture man when I made my involuntary exclamation.
"What does Madame say? Is she not content?" asked William Shakespeare. Herbert's hand shot out behind his back and grasped mine. "Shades of Stratford-on-Avon," he murmured. We had passed a honeymoon day there just a year ago.
It was hard to wait until July 15, and then two days longer for the necessary cleaning by a _femme de ménage_ hired for us by the Sempés. July 17th was the magical day of our first housekeeping. Never before had we been together in a place where everything was ours. Tables and chairs and beds and mattresses, and even the piano rented at ten francs a month, arrived at Twenty-One on hand-carts drawn by men who pulled only a little harder against the greasy harness that bound them to their job than did the dogs under the carts.