None was admitted without a reference (Elizabeth's had been her banker's Paris correspondent); all bills were paid weekly; no gambling was allowed on the premises. For the rest, what her lodgers did concerned madame in no wise. But she had tender, motherly instincts. Never before had a girl of Elizabeth's age come to her unprotected. Was she really so? The suspicion probably crossed her mind; Elizabeth's independence and extravagance lent it some support. Madame's discrimination, however, very quickly told her that she was at fault, and gradually she began to feel an interest in this odd young person, and to desire that all the other inmates of her establishment should be favourably disposed towards her—which, it must be confessed, they were not at first.
Elizabeth's rooms were on the third floor, to the front, the adjoining one being occupied by a young poet of the latest development, whose erotic verse, strange to relate, had not met with as much public favour as its want of castigation would have led one to expect. Perhaps its obscurity in parts may have accounted for this. In a few literary circles his work had been discussed and—dismissed. One eminent academician had said that perhaps, if it were translated into French, he might understand it. Professor Genron, the oldest of the boarders at Madame Martineau's, frankly declared he had no desire to try. Madame de Belcour, on the other hand, who wrote articles in provincial papers, and regarded herself as a literary woman, affirmed them to be deeply moving. His handsome head had probably something to say to the movement; and as he was a man who laid himself out to commit havoc among the fair sex, his conquests afforded
