“Mademoiselle is not well placed,” said a voice at my elbow. Who dared accost me , a being in a mood so little social? I turned, rather to repel than to reply. I saw a man⁠—a burgher⁠—an entire stranger, as I deemed him for one moment, but the next, recognised in him a certain tradesman⁠—a bookseller, whose shop furnished the Rue Fossette with its books and stationery; a man notorious in our pensionnat for the excessive brittleness of his temper, and frequent snappishness of his manner, even to us, his principal customers: but whom, for my solitary self, I had ever been disposed to like, and had always found civil, sometimes kind; once, in aiding me about some troublesome little exchange of foreign money, he had done me a service. He was an intelligent man; under his asperity, he was a good-hearted man; the thought had sometimes crossed me, that a part of his nature bore affinity to a part of M.