“What do you mean by taking me into a dining-room in which my servant
is eating,” she snaps at the waiter, flaring with anger. She turns
around and leaves.
Meanwhile I thank heaven that I am permitted to go on eating. Later I
climb the four flights upstairs to my room. My small trunk is already
there, and a miserable little oil-lamp is burning. It is a narrow room
without fire-place, without a window, but with a small air-hole. If it
weren’t so beastly cold, it would remind me of one of the Venetian
_piombi_.4 Involuntarily I have to laugh out aloud, so that it
re-echoes, and I am startled by my own laughter.
[Footnote 4: These were notorious prisons under the leaden roof of the
Palace of the Doges.]
Suddenly the door is pulled open and the waiter with a theatrical
Italian gesture calls “You are to come down to madame, at once.” I pick
up my cap, stumble down the first few steps, but finally arrive in
front of her door on the first floor and knock.
“Come in!”