Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 2/Life in a French kitchen - Part 1
LIFE IN A FRENCH KITCHEN. By C.
CHAPTER I.
About this time last year, I had several reasons for spending a winter abroad, not the least of which was economy.
The question was, “Where shall I eat husks?”
The answer was, some cheerful place where there was something to be seen, and where amusement, and perhaps everything beyond bed, board, and washing, might be had for nothing. This was required by my finances—and so I chose Paris.
I had turned over in my mind all the English haunts on the Continent, but none of them were very attractive to my John Bull ideas; for, though I had travelled a good deal as a soldier, I had not as yet set foot on the Continent. Some of the haunts were too far off. In some there was nothing whatever to do; in others nothing whatever to see; and in not a few neither the one nor the other—two great drawbacks for an idler. It is very tantalising to have to look on at the best of games; but a man must look on when he cannot afford to play. This was my fate.
Brussels would have attracted me, for, by all accounts, it is a nice clean town, not very expensive, and the brave Belgians are not more un-English than the usual run of foreigners. But there were at that time two or three very agreeable English families of my acquaintance residing in the place, and this turned me against Brussels. They would not have been glad to see me, nor I them.
And so I chose Paris, apparently not a good choice for a man bent on economy; but I heard that Paris was like London in one respect—a man could live as he liked in either place, and have no question asked as to the how and the where. Let a bachelor keep out of the Rue St. Honoré, and mount five pair of stairs instead of two, and he may live in Paris as cheap as he chooses. At any rate, I would try Paris, and if it was too expensive, I could always retreat, shut myself up in Dieppe, or some other place on the coast, and stand a siege as long as the supplies lasted.
So one morning I packed up my things, and was in Paris the same evening. I was driven to an hotel recommended to me by an Englishman during the passage in the steamer; but as the worst room in the house was three francs and a-half a day, without attendance, I started off the following morning in search of a lodging more suited to my finances. I had the choice of either living in a room in an hotel, which in France—and I am speaking more particularly of hotels for the French,—is nothing more than a large lodging-house, with the privilege of dining in the house or not; or I might take an apartement, which is a suite of rooms with a kitchen, furnished and let by the week or month, or unfurnished and let by the term. This was rather more than required; and besides, the next term being in January, I could not enter at once as I wished. After trailing through half Paris on foot, wheels being out of the question, it was evident that I should be driven to an hotel at last. And even here it was difficult to find anything suiting at once my needs and my means: most of the rooms that fitted the latter were wretched dens at the top of the house; some were quite among the tiles, and, though airy, were far from clean. On the same landing with, and next door to not a few, there were odd-looking women, with large ragged families. Up to this time I had laboured under the impression that a Frenchwoman managed not to have more than three children, but this is a mistake au cinquiéme. At the end of a week I was still in the room at three francs and a half a day, and on the point of commencing a retreat to the coast, when in one of my expeditions in search of a home, I entered into conversation with a gentlemanly-looking person in a cocked hat, long blue cloak, and sword. The lady who became my landlady said that it was le bon Dieu that sent me to her hotel; but I found out shortly afterwards that the gentlemanly-looking person was a policeman. He informed me that there was an excellent hotel in the Rue des Mathurins, kept by a friend of his who had been three years in England, and who spoke English; and at that hotel I should find every comfort. “The English spoken” was not a great recommendation, though the comfort of hearing one’s language spoken in foreign lands may not actually appear in the bill, it always puts forty per cent. on every other item.
However, I went to the address, and found the Hôtel d’Ici Bas a respectable-looking house. The landlord spoke English, certainly, but broken into very little pieces, and Madame was a well-dressed woman of thirty-eight, of great ambition, and the most elegant manners.
The house itself had good pretensions—but there was a cooper on one side, and a chaudronnier on the other, who kept down the prices in the Hôtel d’Ici Bas.
“They will not be heard au quatrième,”—and up I went. I made an agreement at once for a room at forty-five francs a month, including attendance—no extras except wood and candles; no table d’hôte, and I might dine where I liked.
The first introduction of a cleanly Englishman to French habits does not produce a pleasant feeling of surprise; and on the subject of the comforts of a bed-room, the French and English have scarcely an idea in common.
Let me describe my room; and before doing so, let me premise, that although the room in the étages below me are more showily furnished than mine au quatrième, the style and number of pieces of furniture are precisely the same. The Hôtel d’Ici Bas is thoroughly French. During the whole time I was in it, the only English people that came to the house were a gentleman and his wife, lately married, who had never been abroad before, arrived late one night, and departed as soon next morning as they could get their bill. They were not driven away by either the cooper or the chaudronnier.
My room, No. 14, is small, but well proportioned, with a gay paper and two windows, the curtains of which are of white muslin and rather faded blue damask. On the chimney-piece, and under a glass case, there is a gilt clock with the figure of French Fame blowing a trumpet—probably her own—and distributing leaves of laurel to several young men. The clock is not more correct than the lady blowing the trumpet. It strikes two at half-past eleven, which is rather a comfort on retiring early—and fifteen at six in the morning, which is rather a bore—but much cannot be expected for forty-five francs a month. Also on the chimney-piece there are a pair of imitation Sèvres vases, and a pair of bronze candlesticks—Cupids holding torches. Behind the clock there is a large pier-glass, which gives my face a distorted look whenever I try to shave in it. There is an uncomfortable easy chair in blue damask; a chest of drawers of inlaid wood, with a turn-down sécrétaire; and a table with a leather top embossed with gold: all this for forty-five francs a month. But here my comforts end. I am six feet high, and the bed, with figured muslin curtains, is but five feet ten inches long. My basin is a large saucer. The milk jug of an English farmhouse holds more than my water jug. The floor is of red glazed octagon tiles. The carpet is two feet square, and there is not a foot-tub in the house. On my second morning in the hotel, where I lived for the first week, I asked for a foot-bath, but as my French was only moderate, the chambermaid, who in France is usually a man, was some time before he could understand me; and then he would not believe me, for the weather was bitterly cold. An incredulous smile covered his face when it was made clear to him that the tub was to be filled with cold water.
“The blood of Monsieur would rush to his head.”
After waiting about an hour, and evidently disturbing some household arrangement, a tub was brought, containing a very small quantity of cold water. It was made of zinc, about fourteen inches high, eight broad at the bottom, and ten at the top, in shape like a section of a conic chimney-pot, but upside down. It answered the purpose pretty well—one foot at a time, and the rest was left to Providence. A suspicion crossed me at the time that this was not its usual purpose; but I should have left the hotel without knowing what that usual purpose was, if I had not one day, on leaving the table d’hôte, peeped behind a screen in the salle à manger, and there seen a garçon washing knives and forks, dishes, and plates in my bain de pied.
My curiosity cost me twelve francs; for, on leaving the hotel I purchased a zinc chimney-pot of my own. Whatever love the French may have for bathing in hot weather—and they tell me it is quite a mania—all I can say is, that during my week in that hotel of forty-eight beds, the chimney-pot was never engaged when I wanted it. Indeed, it was always in my room, except at dinner-time.
I do not mean to say that this description of my room in the hotel of Monsieur Blot represents what a visitor will get in the Grand Hôtel du Louvre; but here I am paying forty-five francs a month, and there he will pay one hundred and fifty at the lowest. He will have more carpet and gilding, and larger pier-glasses, that is all,—the style is the same; and though there may be foot-baths in the house, he will have to pay a franc or two each day for the use of them.
There is one all-sufficient reason why the French use as little water in their houses as they can avoid. It is paid for by the bucket.
The system of égouts, or drains for supplying water to cleanse the streets, to fill fire-engines, and to carry off the rain-water is complete; but every drop of water for household purposes is brought to the door in butts, and retailed by the water-carriers, who are a powerful corporation, numbering ten thousand, with whose privileges no government, since water-works were invented, has been strong enough to interfere.
The Emperor is strong, and called absolute; but he has many masters, not the least of whom is the water-carrier of Paris.
Nothing could be easier than to supply Paris with water to the very attics, for the Seine has a greater fall than the Thames at Richmond Bridge; but every attempt to introduce water-works is opposed by the water-carriers, who will not allow water to be taken from the fountains in greater quantities than in bucketfuls, except by themselves, and it is a hazardous thing for a touch-and-go dynasty to throw ten thousand able-bodied men out of employment.
Hence it is, that though the water is as good, if not better, than in any other capital in Europe, yet it answers one of the never-failing requirements of monopoly by being exceedingly dear; and hence it was, that when at last the chamberman brought me a foot-tub, it contained only a little more water than would have been required to boil an egg.
On the subject of domestic comfort, especially in their bed-rooms and staircases, the French have a great deal to learn;—on many points, in and out of doors, in which we are very scrupulous, they are not civilised, and at first they are quite startling.
*****
There is no table d’hôte in the Hôtel d’Ici Bas and the locataires dine where they like. I thought, at first, of living at a pension or boarding-house where everything is found,—bed, board, wines, and attendance—at prices varying from one hundred and fifty francs a month and upwards. But I could not face being obliged to dine for thirty days in succession with anybody, let alone people that I might not like, and it was not human nature—my nature at any rate—to feel myself bound dine anywhere for a month, and not long to dine somewhere else.
A dinner at a table d’hôte, even at the best hotels, is a tedious business, and to me not a very pleasing process. It generally struck me that the dinner would be more agreeable, if the dishes were a third less in number, of a little better quality, and not quite so cold. Besides there are few tables d’hôte at less than three francs, without attendance or wine, which last a guest is expected to drink for the good of the house.
This was more than I could afford, so there was nothing left for me but the Restaurants, establishments in which the French can give lessons to all nations. They are suited to all purses, and I can pay them the compliment of saying, that even when dining where the regular price for dinner was as little as two francs, I never received anything but the greatest civility, or saw anything but the utmost decorum.
Once or twice I found myself in the company of some young ladies who were rather gaily dressed, and had their hair parted on one side; but if they really were not ladies, they behaved as such in my presence, and their mode of life at home was the business of their parents and guardians, and not mine.
Sometimes even with my cosmopolitan palate—(and the best of everything is good enough for me),—I did not quite like the dishes, and the meat was not always of the best quality—(English beef and mutton rather spoil a fellow for the Continent),—yet a dish was seldom put before me at a Restaurant that was not well cooked, and delicately seasoned.
If a man has a delicate palate and knows how to order a dinner; if he has a stomach perhaps a little on the wane; if he wishes to leave the table without the feeling of being loaded, but with an inclination to dance, he ought to live in Paris.
The soups on the carte at a Restaurant may sometimes taste rather vapid, but they are never hot with pepper, nor do they taste as if they were made of glue and water, as one often finds in England. The French poultry is the best in the world; no game can excel a capon, or a well fed poularde. The veal is good—not so white as ours, for it is not killed till three or four months old, and then not bled to death. Above all, the puddings, the dishes made of sugar and cream, and everything in the shape of pastry, are delicious.
But there are some things to be avoided, and Rosbif is one of them. As soon as the garçon sees a customer is an Englishman (and we are easy to identify), he takes rather a wicked pleasure in asking him to take Rosbif: but avoid it. A French ox has generally seen long service in the plough before being sent to the butcher.
From this circumstance, and the want of good pasture, which does not exist in France, and also from the fact that meat is never kept for more than three or four days, even in winter, and then it is baked instead of being roasted, in consequence of the expense of fuel, I may be believed in saying that the beef is literally as hard as a board.
Young France, who delights in extremes, has lately taken it into his head that underdone meat makes muscle, and tends to the development of the biceps. At present he is dining at the English Restaurants, where there is beef cooked to suit his fancy. He asks for it saignant, and it is scarcely cooked at all.
Also avoid the vin ordinaire, particularly where the dinner is so many francs, “wine included.” Great efforts are made by Government to prevent adulterations in wine and other articles of consumption, but the manufacturers are too clever, and it is known that most of the vin ordinaire is made in Paris, and is not wine at all.
For the first month of my stay in Paris I dined at the different Restaurants, and probably would have continued to do so, if I had not for a few days felt rather unwell. Not wishing to leave the house, for the weather was as cold and bitter and changeable as it only can be in Paris, when it chooses, I asked Madame Blot if she would let me have some dinner in the hotel. I had noticed savoury smells at six o’clock, at which hour two or three of the guests dined with Blot and Madame.
“Would Monsieur dine with them in the kitchen?”
I did so, and never afterwards dined anywhere else, except on great occasions, or when I got my dinner for nothing. Madame did not leave the house more than twice during the winter. She took up her position early in the morning behind the counter, in a room about fourteen feet square, on the right of the entrance door. Here she sat from morning to night, with her feet on a chaufferette (a footstool containing a handful of live coals or charcoal), plying her needle at an endless border, which will be finished when Sisyphus has done with his rolling-stone. A glass door opened into the bedroom of Madame. This, in the daytime was nothing more than a passage to the kitchen, which was quite at the back. Here we dined, and dined well.
There was always either a soupe au gras, that is, with a gravy foundation, and containing vegetables, such as carrots or peas, or a soupe au maigre, which for simplicity and delicacy would have been a lesson to any English cook, plain or otherwise, that ever upset a pepper pot into a soup tureen. Then there came a small joint of mutton or veal, (what odd joints a French butcher does cut!), or a poulet; then an entrée, followed by a purée of peas or spinach, served by itself, and a salad of beet-root and Mars (query the spelling), which is a winter green something like water-cresses, but which I never saw in England. There was as much light Bordeaux as we chose, a dessert, a cup of strong coffee, with the invariable petit verre as a finish.
These dinners had many charms in my eyes. They were served well, by Blot himself, and of course hot, for we were dining in the kitchen. Everything was probably inexpensive, but it was undeniably good. The bread was like a cake.
The Blots may not have made much profit by us, but our dining in the kitchen enabled them to have a better dinner than they otherwise would have had. Madame eats little, but she is a delicate feeder, and she and I perfectly agree on one point—we both love a change dearly. The same dish never appears twice in the same week, except by particular desire.
Women are very observing. Madame probably saw, from my habits of life, that my finances were not very flourishing; and when she gave me my bill at the end of the month, I was almost ashamed to pay it. There were several things to be learned in the kitchen. I saw how Blot made a potage au gras and a maigre, a purée of vegetables, a vol au vent, and above all a salad. I also learned how, with a handful of coals or charcoal, and a fourneau or range forty inches long and thirty-four wide, a dinner could be served hot and fresh for a party of eight. The fuel consumed in this kitchen in a year would not keep going the kitchen of an hotel of the same size in England for one week.
CHAPTER II. OUR COMPANY IN THE KITCHEN.
There is a theory that the science of French cookery is a necessity consequent on the hardness of the beef and mutton, without which science no human stomach could digest them, and there would be an end to the population.
I have also a theory that the taste in dress displayed by a Frenchwoman, is a talent given to her by Providence to compensate for her ugliness, a talent without which she could not induce the male to marry her, and there would be an end to the population.
A Frenchwoman is the ugliest female of the human species. An African negress, with her flat nose and thick lips, is not very attractive; but her ugliness has a national type, and cases are known in which a European, after twenty years on the West Coast of Africa, and seeing nothing else to make him discontented, has become reconciled to her, as we do after a time to nearly everything else in the world, and as I did to the cooper on one side and to the chaudronnier on the other. But each individual Frenchwoman has an ugliness of her own, whether it be the ugliness of a tiger, or of a ferret, or of a monkey, or a combination of all three, in which last case, however, the monkey usually has a slight preponderance.
There is something fearful in the expression of a Frenchwoman of the lower orders when her animal instincts are excited—by jealousy, for instance, or when she is paying money, a severe trial to most faces. Come with me to-morrow to the Halle Centrale, a market for everything, near the church of St. Eustache. We will watch the women haggling and parting with money, and you will be satisfied, as I am, that within a not very long time previous to the historical period, the natives of France were crossed with a monkey. Look at that respectably dressed woman haggling for giblets! her hair comes down the ridge bone between her temple and forehead till it actually joins her eyebrows. This is a certain sign of there having been, some time or other, a monkey among the branches of the family pedigree. Even in a ball-room, where she is all smiles, and is looking all she knows, a Frenchwoman will try—for she is a great general—to divert your attention from her face to her dress; but do not be diverted; look at her features, and you will see nothing but tiger, ferret, and monkey.
Oh, my fair fellow-countrywomen! what a comfort it is for us to think that you can give a Frenchwoman all her petty arts of dress, and still beat her! Yet you might show a little more taste in your choice of colours, for I have had to blush for many of you lately in the Bois de Boulogne.
These remarks are necessary as a preface to an introduction to my landlady.
Dear Madame Blot! you are the kindest and best of women: you were a mother to me when I was in sickness and poverty. But you are plain, even for a Frenchwoman. Yet so neat and tasteful is your poplin dress, so well does that ribbon suit your grey cat’s eyes, and your outward cuticle (it cannot be called a complexion), so elegant are your manners, and so charming is your conversation, that it would be an actual intrusion to look at your face.
Like all her race, Madame has a scrubby head of hair—but I will not describe her, for, to tell the truth, I was in the house for a whole winter, and never looked at her face but once, and that once quite by accident in the beginning of spring. I would have left Paris in total ignorance of what she was like, if her parrot (such a parrot! although born in Martinique, it has a much better Parisian accent than either I or the garçon) had not bit her finger one dull day. Parrots are subject to dyspepsia in dull weather. Madame had a weak moment, and did what few women can afford to do—she frowned. I took a side-look at her face, and the illusion was over. We remained good friends, but from that moment to the day of my departure she was moité tigre, moitié singe.
Madame has thirty-eight years, and the beautiful figure of a woman of five-and-twenty—without stays. Her vanity requests me to satisfy myself on this point. A fine foot and ankle, also called to my notice on the plea of her suffering from cold feet. She says she gave way early in life to the use of a chaufferette, till at last it is of no use to her.
“Would Monsieur feel her feet?”
The foot and leg were cold indeed—cold as marble, and well chiselled marble, too.
I cannot give a very clear account of my landlord, or as Madame calls him, Mon Blot, on ordinary occasions, or mon chéri when she wants anything. He is about fifty, a thorough Frenchman, with a deal of devilry and bonhommie, and a stubble head. He talks freely on most subjects, except the Emperor, whom he never mentions, and himself only now and then. I asked him several questions, in a careless off-hand manner, about his antecedents, more for civility’s sake than anything else, before finding out that the antecedents were delicate ground. And then I became very anxious to know all about him—of course—but I had to guess him, for he was hard to pump.
He was in England from 1848 to 1851, and how he can have been there so long and know so little of the language and everything English, would be unaccountable, if we had not evidence of how completely men can shut eyes and ears when determined not to use them. Instances are known in which emigrés of the first Revolution returned to France on the restoration of the Bourbons, without being able to speak a single word of English. Young France is learning English with a French accent which gives our language a peculiar cadence; but the generation just beginning to pass away, to which Blot belongs, thought French enough to pass a man through the whole world.
It may be taken as a rule that a man never learns the language of a nation that learns his, and vice versâ—man never works when another will work for him. Everybody learns French, and a Frenchman seldom, if over, speaks any language but his own. Nobody learns Russ, and the Russians are the best linguists in the world. Hence it is that a Frenchman is so much discontented when out of his own country. He cannot learn a language if he tries, and he is literally deprived of speech till he gets home again.
When Mon Blot was in England, Madame remained in Paris. He was en garçon, and says so, as if he wished to make it appear he had been there for his own pleasure, and had enjoyed himself. I asked a few questions, as it were casually:
“Was he chef in a nobleman’s family?”
“Oh, non.”
“Was he in the suite of the ambassador?”
This question had a wide margin, including every place in the embassy, from valet upwards.
“Oh, non. He was in the country—in the west of Scotland—fishing à la ligne—it was rather triste.”
Fishing! in the west of Scotland with a rod and line! A strange thing for a Frenchman to do.
An idea flashes across me that the years of his absence tally with a revolution, a coup d’état, and a general amnesty that took place about that time—so I must ask no more questions. What does his beard say? Nothing, for there is not a bristle to be seen. In countries where there is neither liberty of the press, nor liberty of speech, men endeavour to express political tendencies by their hats and beards. And a very unbecoming way it is of speaking; because, if a man were to say I am an admirer of the Emperor Napoleon, he would not be believed unless he wore a beard à la Billygoat, which is the beard adopted by his Majesty. This is not the most fashionable beard in France, but it is by far the most common, for it is worn by the army to a man, and not only by the whole body of officials of every branch, but also by every one who hopes some day or other to be in the pay of government. The present fashion, however, of wearing the hair is very becoming. It is cut quite short in the nape of the neck, increasing in length to the top of the head; when still short it is divided on one side, and brushed rather back so as to show the temples. With a well shaped head and muscular neck and throat, this cut gives a fellow a very manly appearance. There are, however, in the streets of Paris all sorts of beards, from the full Italian to the clean shave. This last is the pledge of total political abstinence, and is adopted by Mon Blot, who probably on one occasion, to which he does not allude, said as much as will serve him to the next revolution. His tongue may have brought him to grief, but he takes very good care that his beard shall never send him a second time fly-fishing into the west of Scotland.
A young man of the name of Louis Velay dines with us in the kitchen nearly every day. He is about twenty years of age, and has been studying for the last two years to enable him to pass an examination for the Engineers, and the other high branches of military science. He has great versatility of talent, and is pretty well informed without being well read, but he is the most thoroughly conceited French puppy that ever was seen. He says the examinations are very severe, which I believe they are, but he could succeed easily enough if he only gave his mind to the subjects. When he tried to pass, there were eight hundred candidates, and only one hundred appointments vacant. He was unlucky—he was plucked—he means to try again; but he is not very anxious about it, for he now thinks that diplomacy, or la haute finance (which is a cross between the business of Baron Rothschild and that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer) will be a better field for his talents. He says this quite seriously.
I was puzzled for a long time how to account for a genius like Louis Velay failing in anything that he undertook, for he lives in the room next to mine, and reads very hard—until I found out that he had the perversity of giving his whole mind, by fits and starts, to subjects not required in his examination. Music, for instance, on which science he talks very learnedly, though he does not sing or play any instrument. The French not being very strong in modern languages, he is only required to take up a little bit of German; but being true to his perversity, he has for the last year and a half devoted three hours a day of his precious time to the study of the English language. He has gone through a regular course of English literature, and is well informed on the merits of our old classics and the poets of the time of Queen Anne. Unfortunately, his professor of English is a Frenchman, and when he quotes Shakspeare, which he delights to do, it might be Molière, for I do not understand a word he says.
There is another, but not a regular, diner in the kitchen, one Alfred Duchêne, a sous-lieutenant in the Cent Gardes. He is six feet high, manly looking, and well made, which is not often the case with the French when above a certain height. Of course he wears a beard à la bouc, and shaves his cheeks and part of his temples, by which he would spoil his looks if he were not one of the handsomest men I ever saw. He also tries to spoil his figure by a struggle with his waist—a universal struggle with French officers of all ages; but he is fond of good things, which in this house he probably has for nothing, and in a few years the waist will have the best of it, and he will require a new cuirass.
Where are your brains, Alfred Duchêne? With your face and figure, skyblue tunic, and jack boots; gold epaulettes and white horse-hair plume from the crest of your helmet to your waist? to be eight-and-twenty, and still a sous-lieutenant—where are your brains? Have you no ambition?
Alfred Duchêne begs to inform me that he cannot pass his examination. After dinner some of our neighbours drop in. There is a good coal fire for Madame’s feet, and this is a great attraction, where fuel is sold by the kilogramme.[1] The first that appears is a Mademoiselle Marguerite—I have not arrived at her surname—a very handsome girl of about twenty, whose mother keeps the small lace shop round the corner. I could not guess for a long time where Marguerite got her regular features, large blue eyes, and good womanly expression, until she told me that she came from Strasbourg, which town, though within the French boundary, is essentially German in population and language—so much so, that when she came to Paris two years ago, she did not speak a word of French. It would not be prudent to ask too many questions about antecedents, for the answers might destroy the sentiment; but I did ask how it was that she was still a demoiselle. She sighed, and said something about being too poor to marry. This is a great fiction among the spinsters of the middling and lower orders. Poverty in France, like the young man’s promise in England, is made the excuse not only for being unmarried, but for all the liberties of single life.
But they really are very poor in the lace shop round the corner.
I know beforehand when the lieutenant is coming by the appearance of a diamond ring on Madame’s finger, and of some Valenciennes lace, which sees light on these occasions only; not that I think she is any attraction to him now—that is over—but between the revolution and the general amnesty, when the “chéri” was fly-fishing in the west of Scotland, Alfred must have been an exceedingly handsome lad of twenty, and she a smart ambitious woman of thirty; two periods of life between which there are often very strong affinities. She is naturally proud of him, and therefore glad to see him. He comes for the cupboard, and a very good cupboard it is too. Alfred talks in a careless unguarded manner on most subjects, even the Emperor, and particularly the Empress, which is not very wise, for he is one of the Body Guard. He has also some dreadful sentiments about female virtue which appear to shock Madame, and others about religion which really do startle Marguerite, whose confidence in Sainte Monica, the guardian saint of her native village, is something quite beautiful.
But Alfred is a good fellow for a Frenchman, and liberal. If he had ten cigars in his case he would divide them with me en frère. I like him vastly—he is such a thorough vagabond.
After dinner we play rampse, a curious game like five-card loo, but at which nobody wins, and the loser puts two or three sous into the pool. A partie takes up as much time as a short rubber at whist, and it will be seen that it requires a great deal of attention to enable any one of us to lose half a franc in an evening.
At the end of a week, if the pool has accumulated to ten francs, which it sometimes does when we have been hard at it, we invest the amount in a supper, consisting of a galantine of fowl, a salad, roasted chesnuts, and the dinner wine. Sometimes, in a weak moment, I stand a bowl of rum punch, which is brewed strong for Blot and me, and very sweet to please Madame.
And here my French begins to thaw, and comes down in an avalanche of irregular and reflected verbs. Monsieur Blot also softens and relates an anecdote of himself and an English countess; but as he mentions no names or dates, except that it occurred when he was “in English,” as he calls it, nobody can contradict him. The lieutenant sings a song of which I do not catch the exact meaning, but the words jour and amour are heard jingling at the end of the burden. The ladies are delighted, and I applaud when they do. This brings us to about twelve o’clock. The men salute each lady on both sides of the cheek, and we part for the night.
- ↑ About 2½ pounds.