the whole world over; so, at the invitation
of a parboiled-looking man in a shooting-
jacket and a passion (who might have
been His Lordship himself for aught I
knew), I went up-stairs. There was an
outer chamber, with benches covered with
red cotton velvet, and cracked marble tables,
like an indifferent cafe; where some bearded
men were making a horrible rattle with their
dominoes, and smoking their abominable
cigars (surely a course of French cigars is
enough to cure the most inveterate smoker
of his love for the weed). This somewhat
discomposed me; but I was fain to push
forward into the next saloon where the tables
were laid out for dining; and taking my seat,
to wait for beef.

There was myself and a black man, and his
(white) wife, the Frenchman with the
spectacles, and the Frenchman with the bald head
(I speak of them generically, for you are sure
to meet their fellows at every public dining-table
abroad), the poor old Frenchman with
the wig, the paralytic head and the shaking
hands that trifle with the knives and forks,
as though they were red-hot. There were
half-a-dozen other sons of Gaul; who, with
their beards, cache-nezs, and paletôts, all
made to pattern, might have been one
another's brothers; two ancient maiden
ladies, who looked like English governesses,
who had passed, probably, some five-and-thirty
years in Paris, and had begun to speak
a little of the language; a rude young
Englishman, who took care to make all the
company aware of the coarseness of his birthplace;
an English working engineer, long resident
abroad, much travel-worn, and decidedly oily,
who had a voice like a crank, and might have
been the identical engineer that Mr. Albert
Smith met on the Austrian Lloyd's steamer;
and a large-headed little boy,with a round
English jacket, who sat alone, eating mournfully,
and whom I could not help fancying to be
some little friendless scholar in a great French
school, whose jour de sortie it was, and who
had come here to play at an English dinner.
The days be short to thee, little boy with the
large head! May they fly quickly till the
welcome holidays, when thou wilt be
forwarded, per rail and boat, to the London
Bridge station of the South Eastern Railway,
to be left till called for. I know from sad
experience how very weary are the strange land
and the strange bed, the strange lessons and
the strange playmates, to thy small English
heart!

A gaunt, ossified waiter, with blue black
hair, jaws so closely shaven that they gave
him an unpleasant resemblance to the grand
inquisitor of the holy office in disguise seeking
for heretics in a cook-shop, and who
was, besides, in a perpetual cold perspiration
of anger against the irate man in the shooting
jacket below, and carried on fierce verbal
warfare with him down the staircase. This
waiter rose up against me, rather than
addressed me, and charged me with a pike
of bread, cutting my ordinarily immense
slice from it. I mildly suggested roast
beef, wincing, it must be owned, under the
eye of the cadaverous waiter; who looked as
if he were accustomed to duplicity, and
did not believe a word that I was saying.

"Ah! rosbif! " he echoed, "bien saignant
n'est ce pas?"

Now, so far from liking my meat "bien
saignant" I cannot even abide the sight of
it rare, and I told him so. But he repeated
"bien saignant," and vanished.

He came again, though; or rather his
Jesuitical head protruded itself over the top
of the box where I sat (there were boxes at
His Lordship's) and asked:
"Paint portare? p'lale? ole' ale?"

I was nettled, and told him sharply that
I would try the wine, if he could recommend
it. Whereupon there was silence, and then
I heard a voice crying down a pipe, "Paint
portare!"

He brought me my dinner, and I didn't like
it. It was bien saignant, but it wasn't beef, and
it swam in a dead sea of gravy that was
not to my taste; fat from strange animals
seemed to have been grafted on to the lean. I
did not get on better with the potatoes, which
were full of promise, like a park hack, and
unsatisfactory in the performance. I tried
some plum-pudding afterwards; but, if the
proof of the pudding be in the eating, that
pudding remains unproved to this day; for,
when I tried to fix my fork in it, it
rebounded away across the room, and hit the
black man on the leg. I would rather not
say anything about the porter, if you please;
and perhaps it is well to be brief on the
subject of the glass of hot gin-and-water I tried
afterwards, in a despairing attempt to be
convivial; for it smelt of the midnight-lamp
like an erudite book, and of the midnight oil-can,
and had the flavour of the commercial
terebinthium, rather than of the odoriferous
Juniperus. I consoled myself with some
Cheshire cheese, and asked the waiter if he
had the Presse.

"Ze Time is gage," he answered.

I did not want the Times. I wanted the
Presse.

"Sare," he repeated wrathfully, "Ze Time
is gage. Le Journal Anglais (he accentuated
this spitefully) is gage."

He would have no further commerce with
me after this; and, doubtlessly thinking that
an Englishman who couldn't eat his beef
under-done or indeed at all, and preferred the
Presse to the Times newspaper, was an
outcast and a renegade, abandoned me to my
evil devices, and contented himself with
crying "Voila!" from the murky distance
without coming when I called. He even
declined to attend to receive payment, and
handed me over for that purpose to a long
French boy in a blouse, whose feet had
evidently not long been emancipated from the