“I will arrange about the rent in my interview with the young lady.  I don’t think I shall have so many enquiries, for the young lady is to speak French and English, and also to be respectable.  She must not receive any visits, not even from her father and mother, if she has them.”

“But there will be a mob in front of the house reading the notice.”

“All the better.  Nothing is the worse for being a little odd.”

It happened just as the old woman had foretold; as soon as the notice was up, everybody stopped to read it, made various comments, and passed on.  On the second day after it was up, my Negro told me that my notice was printed in full in the St. James’s Chronicle, with some amusing remarks.  I had the paper brought up to me, and Fanny translated it.  It ran as follows: 

“The landlord of the second and third floors probably occupies the first floor himself.  He must be a man of the world and of good taste, for he wants a young and pretty lodger; and as he forbids her to receive visits, he will have to keep her company himself.”

He added,—­

“The landlord should take care lest he become his own dupe, for it is very likely that the pretty lodger would only take the room to sleep in, and possibly only to sleep in now and then; and if she chose she would have a perfect right to refuse to receive the proprietor’s visits.”

These sensible remarks delighted me, for after reading them I felt forewarned.

Such matters as these give their chief interest to the English newspapers.  They are allowed to gossip about everything, and the writers have the knack of making the merest trifles seem amusing.  Happy is the nation where anything may be written and anything said!

Lord Pembroke was the first to come and congratulate me on my idea, and he was succeeded by Martinelli; but he expressed some fears as to the possible consequences, “for,” said he, “there are plenty of women in London who would come and lodge with you to be your ruin.”

“In that case,” I answered, “it would be a case of Greek meeting Greek; however, we shall see.  If I am taken in, people will have the fullest right to laugh at me, for I have been warned.”

I will not trouble my readers with an account of the hundred women who came in the first ten days, when I refused on one pretext or another, though some of them were not wanting in grace and beauty.  But one day, when I was at dinner, I received a visit from a girl of from twenty to twenty-four years, simply but elegantly dressed; her features were sweet and gracious, though somewhat grave, her complexion pale, and her hair black.  She gave me a bow which I had to rise to return, and as I remained standing she politely begged me not to put myself out, but to continue my dinner.  I begged her to be seated and to take dessert, but she refused with an air of modesty which delighted me.

This fair lady said, not in French, but in Italian worthy of a Sinnese, its purity was so perfect, that she hoped I would let her have a room on the third floor, and that she would gladly submit to all my conditions.