Madame D'Anville was going to the Luxembourg; and my only chance of soothing her anger was to accompany her.
Down stairs, therefore, we went, and drove to the Luxembourg; I gave Bedos, before my departure, various little commissions, and told him he need not be at home till the evening.

Long before the expiration of an hour, Madame D'Anville's ill humour had given me an excuse for affecting it myself.

Tired to death of her, and panting for release, I took a high tone--complained of her ill temper, and her want of love--spoke rapidly--waited for no reply, and leaving her at the Luxembourg, proceeded forthwith to Galignani's, like a man just delivered from a strait waistcoat.
Leave me now, for a few minutes, in the reading-room at Galignani's, and return to the mistress of the hotel, whom I had so unceremoniously thrust out of my salon.

The passage into which she had been put communicated by one door with my rooms, and by another with the staircase.

Now, it had so happened, that Bedos was in the habit of locking the latter door, and keeping the key; the other egress, it will be remembered, I myself had secured; so that the unfortunate mistress of the hotel was no sooner turned into this passage than she found herself in a sort of dungeon, ten feet by five, and surrounded, like Eve in Paradise, by a whole creation--not of birds, beasts, and fishes, but of brooms, brushes, unclean linen, and a wood-basket.