CHAPTER VII.
July 1st.
She has been now over five weeks under my roof, and I have put off the evil day of explaining her to Judith; and Judith returns to-morrow.
I know it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing appearance.
For the oddity I care not two pins.

_Io son' io_.

But the question that exercises me occasionally is: In what category are my relations with Carlotta to be classified?
I do not regard her as a daughter; still less as a sister: not even as a deceased wife's sister.

For a secretary she is too abysmally ignorant, too grotesquely incapable.

What she knows would be made to kick the beam against the erudition of a guinea-pig.
Yet she must be classified somehow.