"To the Maison Dorée, then," said Dalrymple, "with what speed and appetite we may! By Jove! Herr Franz, you are a connoisseur in the matter of dining."
"A man who for twenty-nine days out of every thirty pays his sixty-five centimes for two dishes at a student's Restaurant in the Quartier Latin, knows better than most people where to go for a good dinner when he has the chance," said Müller, philosophically. "The ragoûts of the Temple--the arlequins of the Cité--the fried fish of the Odéon arcades--the unknown hashes of the guingettes, and the 'funeral baked meats' of the Palais Royal, are all familiar to my pocket and my palate. I do not scruple to confess that in cases of desperate emergency, I have even availed myself of the advantages of Le hasard."
"Le hasard." said I. "What is that?"
"Le hasard de la fourchette," replied the student, "is the resort of the vagabond, the gamin, and the chiffonier. It lies down by the river-side, near the Halles, and consists of nothing but a shed, a fire, and a caldron. In this caldron a seething sea of oleaginous liquid conceals an infinite variety of animal and vegetable substances. The arrangements of the establishment are beautifully simple. The votary pays his five centimes and is armed by the presiding genius of the place with a huge two-pronged iron fork. This fork he plunges in once;--he may get a calf's foot, or a potato, or a sheep's head, or a carrot, or a cabbage, or nothing, as fate and the fork direct. All men are gamblers in some way or another, and Le hasard is a game of gastronomic chance. But from the ridiculous to the sublime, it is but a step--and while talking of Le hasard behold, we have arrived at the Maison Dorée."
CHAPTER XIX.
A DINNER AT THE MAISON DORÉE AND AN EVENING PARTY IN THE QUARTIER LATIN.
The most genial of companions was our new acquaintance, Franz Müller, the art-student. Light-hearted, buoyant, unassuming, he gave his animal spirits full play, and was the life of our little dinner. He had more natural gayety than generally belongs to the German character, and his good-temper was inexhaustible. He enjoyed everything; he made the best of everything; he saw food for laughter in everything. He was always amused, and therefore was always amusing. Above all, there was a spontaneity in his mirth which acted upon others as a perpetual stimulant. He was in short, what the French call a bon garçon, and the English a capital fellow; easy without assurance, comic without vulgarity, and, as Sydney Smith wittily hath it--"a great number of other things without a great number of other things."
Upon Dalrymple, who had been all day silent, abstracted, and unlike his usual self, this joyous influence acted like a tonic. As entertainer, he was bound to exert himself, and the exertion did him good. He threw off his melancholy; and with the help, possibly, of somewhat more than his usual quantity of wine, entered thoroughly into the passing joyousness of the hour. What a recherché, luxurious extravagant little dinner it was, that evening at the Maison Dorée! We had a charming little room overlooking the Boulevard, furnished with as much looking-glass, crimson-velvet, gilding, and arabesque painting as could be got together within the space of twelve-feet by eight. Our wine came to table in a silver cooler that Cellini might have wrought. Our meats were served upon porcelain that would have driven Palissy to despair. We had nothing that was in season, except game, and everything that was out; which, by-the-way, appears to be our modern criterion of excellence with respect to a dinner. Finally, we were waited upon by the most imposing of waiters--a waiter whose imperturbable gravity was not to be shaken by any amount of provocation, and whose neckcloth alone was sufficient to qualify him for the church.
How merry we were! How Müller tormented that diplomatic waiter! What stories we told! what puns we made! What brilliant things we said, or fancied we said, over our Chambertin and Johannisberger! Müller knew nothing of the substratum of sadness underlying all that jollity. He little thought how heavy Dalrymple's strong heart had been that morning. He had no idea that my friend and I were to part on the morrow, for months or years, as the case might be--he to carry his unrest hither and thither through distant lands; I to remain alone in a strange city, pursuing a distasteful study, and toiling onward to a future without fascination or hope. But, as the glass seals tell us, "such is life." We are all mysteries to one another. The pleasant fellow whom I invite to dinner because he amuses me, carries a scar on his soul which it would frighten me to see; and he in turn, when he praises my claret, little dreams of the carking care that poisons it upon my palate, and robs it of all its aroma. Perhaps the laughter-loving painter himself had his own little tragedy locked up in some secret corner of the heart that seemed to beat so lightly under that braided blouse of Palais Royal cut and Quartier Latin fashion! Who could tell? And of what use would it be, if it were told? Smiles carry one through the world more agreeably than tears, and if the skeleton is only kept decently out of sight in its own unsuspected closet, so much the better for you and me, and society at large.