原文 (英语)

CHAPTER I. I was not rich—on the contrary; and I had been told the Pension Beaurepas was cheap.  I had, moreover, been told that a boarding-house is a capital place for the study of human nature.  I had a fancy for a literary career, and a friend of mine had said to me, “If you mean to write you ought to go and live in a boarding-house; there is no other such place to pick up material.”  I had read something of this kind in a letter addressed by Stendhal to his sister: “I have a passion