So Margari had managed to set up as a gentleman and become his own
master. Clementina's money bought the furniture and they even sported a
musical clock.
Mr. Margari had a smoking-room all to himself, in which he did nothing
all day but smoke his pipe. No more work for him now, no more copying of
MSS. There the happy husband, dressed in a flowered dressing-gown,
stretched himself out at full length on the sofa and blew clouds of
smoke all around him out of his long csibuk, stuffed full with the best
Turkish tobacco.
Clementina was always scolding him for putting his legs upon the sofa.
It was a nasty habit she said, and not only unbecoming but expensive,
because it ruined the furniture. Clementina, in fact, was scolding him
all day; and this was very natural, for any woman who has been condemned
to obsequious servility for thirty whole years and has silently endured
the caprices of her betters all that time, when she sets up as a lady on
her own account will do her best to compensate herself for this
interminable suppression of her natural instincts. But Mr. Margari used
only to laugh when his wife began nagging at him. "_Alios jam vidi ego
ventos, aliasque procellas_," he would say. He was only too glad to have
a home of his own at all.
"Don't worry, woman!" he would say with reference to the furniture,
"when that's worn out, I'll buy some more.
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