Apparently I'm poorly-educated, or, How do you say "oops" in French?

Arrived in Paris. Met Leona at airport, took the train into city, got to the apartment and met the landlord's very sweet mother, as arranged. Amongst other things, she showed me my apartment mailbox, although the key seemed to have trouble opening the mailbox, the previous tenant's name was still on the flap and there was mail in the box (she removed all of this). I was advised to relabel my box as soon as possible, as the landlord had mailed me some documents.


After she left, I shopped for groceries and whatnot. When I got home and went to re-label my mailbox, I found that someone had replaced the same label that had been there that morning. There was also some note scrawled above the mailboxes saying something about them, but I wasn't sure if it hadn't been there earlier. In my exhaustion, I assumed that someone thought the previous tenant was still around (or something) so I tore off the new label and replaced it with mine, without giving it a second thought.


That night, as I prepared for bed (and the exhaustion had finally REALLY hit me), my doorbell rang. I opened to see a man and woman standing there, the man asking if I was Edward Houle. With no further ado, he proceeded to yell and berate me for having used his mailbox, screaming that he's lived at this building for twelve years, and asked what kind of "poorly-educated person" would do such a thing in the first place. 


Having been thus subjected to his petit-bourgeois insult, I apologized and explained that the landlady had apparently shown me the wrong box by mistake (for what it's worth, this neighbour's name and that of the previous tenant are somewhat similar, although I didn't bring that up). He said that a first mistake might be understandable, but when he replaced the label AND had added the note above the mailboxes...? And hadn't I even seen the note?!? I said that I hadn't understood that the note was related---a silly mistake on my part, I would say now, although his note, from what I can recall, could have addressed the situation more clearly. Nonetheless, he never seemed satisfied with anything I said, even when I tried explained (in a French more broken than usual, given the jolt I had been given) that I hadn't done anything to purposefully insult him. Either he was too angry to accept that at the time, or he felt that my "slight" had been too egregious.


His friend, who was much calmer and more reasonable, tried to calm him and end the conversation. She told him that no matter, this had all been taken care of now, and the only strange thing in the end is that my mailbox key could also open his. After all, I had merely been shown the wrong mailbox, and, she added, "he doesn't know French very well." I hope she assumed that the quality of my French was so poor that I wouldn't be able to gauge the quality of her tact.


I went to bed thinking that I should have checked my neighbour's name more carefully against the previous tenant's, but also impressed by the former's extremes of passive-agression and full-out aggression. It reminded me how when I was in Rome, some of my friends had problems with neighbours who would also just pop up at their doors screaming and yelling from the get-go. Eventually I was able to relax enough to fall asleep.