The destiny that made me a traveller has blessed me with either the contentment of the most simple or the perfect enjoyment of the most cultivated cuisine; and if I have eaten tripe de rocher with Parry at the Pole, I have never lost thereby the acme of my relish for truffles at the ‘Frères.’ Therefore, trust me that in my mention of a table d’hôte I have not forgotten the most essential of its features—for this, the smallness and consequent selectness of the party is always a guarantee.
Thus, then, you are at table; your napkin is spread, but you see no soup. The reason is at once evident, and you accept with gratefulness the little plate of Ostend oysters, each somewhat smaller than a five-franc piece, that are before you. Who would seek for pearls without when such treasures are to be found within the shell—cool and juicy and succulent; suggestive of delights to come, and so suited to the limpid glass of Chablis. What preparatives for the potage, which already I perceive to be a printanière.
But why dwell on all this? These memoranda of mine were intended rather to form a humble companion to some of John Murray’s inestimable treatises on the road; some stray recollection of what in my rambles had struck me as worth mention; something that might serve to lighten a half-hour here or an evening there; some hint for the wanderer of a hotel or a church or a view or an actor or a poet, a picture or a pâte, for which his halting-place is remarkable, but of whose existence he knew not. And to come back once more, such a picture as I have presented is but a weak and imperfect sketch of the Hôtel de France in Brussels—at least, of what I once remember it.
Poor Biennais, he was an artiste! He commenced his career under Chicaud, and rose to the dignity of rôtisseur under Napoleon. With what enthusiasm he used to speak of his successes during the Empire, when Bonaparte gave him carte-blanche to compose a dinner for a ‘party of kings!’ Napoleon himself was but an inferior gastronome. With him, the great requisite was to serve anywhere and at any moment; and though the bill of fare was a modest one, it was sometimes a matter of difficulty to prepare it in the depths of the Black Forest or on the sandy plains of Prussia, amid the mud-covered fields of Poland or the snows of Muscovy. A poulet, a cutlet, and a cup of coffee was the whole affair; but it should be ready as if by magic. Among his followers were several distinguished gourmets. Cambacérès was well known; Murat also, and Decrès, the Minister of Marine, kept admirable tables. Of these, Biennais spoke with ecstasy; he remembered their various tastes, and would ever remark, when placing some masterpiece of skill before you, how the King of Naples loved or the arch-chancellor praised it. To him the overthrow of the empire was but the downfall of the cuisine; and he saw nothing more affecting in the last days of Fontainebleau than that the Emperor had left untouched a fondue he had always eaten of with delight. ‘After that,’ said Biennais, ‘I saw the game was up.’ With the Hundred Days he was ‘restored,’ like his master; but, alas! the empire of casseroles was departed; the thunder of the cannon foundries, and the roar of the shot furnaces were more congenial sounds than the simmering of sauces and the gentle murmur of a stew-pan. No wonder, thought he, there should come a Waterloo, when the spirit of the nation had thus degenerated. Napoleon spent his last days in exile; Biennais took his departure for Belgium. The park was his Longwood; and, indeed, he himself saw invariable points of resemblance in the two destinies. Happily for those who frequented the Hôtel de France, he did not occupy his remaining years in dictating his memoirs to some Las Casas of the kitchen, but persevered to the last in the practice of his great art, and died, so to speak, ladle in hand.
To me the Hôtel de France has many charms. I remember it, I shall not say how many years—its cool, delightful salon, looking out upon that beautiful little park whose shady alleys are such a resource in the evenings of summer; its lime-trees, beneath which you may sit and sip your coffee, as you watch the groups that pass and repass before you, weaving stories to yourself which become thicker and thicker as the shade deepens, and the flitting shapes are barely seen as they glide along the silent alleys, while a distant sound of music—some air of the Fatherland—is all that breaks the stillness, and you forget in the dreamy silence that you are in the midst of a great city.
The Hôtel de France has other memories than these, too. I ‘m not sure that I shall not make a confession, yet somehow I half shrink from it. You might call it a love adventure, and I should not like that; besides, there is scarcely a moral in it—though who knows?
CHAPTER X. A DILEMMA
It was in the month of May—I won’t confess to the year—that I found myself, after trying various hotels in the Place Royale, at last deposited at the door of the Hôtel de France. It seemed to me, in my then ignorance, like a pis aller, when the postillion said, ‘Let us try the “France,”’ and little prepared me for the handsome, but somewhat small, hotel before me. It was nearly five o’clock when I arrived, and I had only time to make some slight change in my dress when the bell sounded for table d’hôte.
The guests were already seated when I entered, but a place had been reserved for me, which completed the table. I was a young—perhaps after reading a little farther you’ll say a very young—traveller at the time, but was soon struck by the quiet and decorous style in which the dinner was conducted. The servants were prompt, silent, and observant; the guests, easy and affable; the equipage of the table was even elegant; and the cookery, Biennais! I was the only Englishman present, the party being made up of Germans and French; but all spoke together like acquaintances, and before the dinner had proceeded far were polite enough to include me in the conversation.