She borrowed her language as well as her costume from the “Grande Nation,” and with this comfortable reflection, that she was not likely to be asked to restore the loan. Her French was about as incongruous as her dress; but Quebec, fortunately, was not Paris, and she drove her coach-and-six through “Adelow,” with a hardihood that outstripped, if it did not defy, criticism.
By the military and naval people she was deemed the best “fun” going; her pretension, her affectation, her shrewdness, and her simplicity, her religious homage to fashion, her unmerciful tyranny towards what she thought vulgarity, made her the subject of many a joke and much amusement. The other classes, the more regular habitués of the “house,” thought she was a princess in disguise; they revered her opinions as oracles, and only wondered how the court-end could spare one so evidently formed to be the glass of fashion.
If I have been too prolix in my sketch, kind reader, attribute it to the true cause,—my anxiety to serve those who are good enough to place themselves under my guidance. Mrs. D. still lives; the establishment still survives; at five o'clock each day—ay, this very day, I have no doubt—her table is crowded by “the rank and fashion” of the Quebec world; and the chances are, if you yourself, worthy reader, should visit that city, that you may be glad to give your blank days to the fare of Madam Davis.
It was ten o'clock in the forenoon as I arrived at her door, and sent in Captain Pike's letter, announcing my arrival. I found Mrs. D. in what she called her own room,—a little den of about eleven feet square, shelved all round, and showing an array of jars and preserve-pots that was most imposing,—the offerings of skippers from the West India Islands and Madeira, who paid a kind of black-mail in preserved ginger, guavas, yams, pepper-pots, chili, and potted crabs that would have given liver complaints to half the Province.
Mrs. D. was standing on a step-ladder, arranging her treasures by the aid of a negro boy of about twelve years old, as I entered; and not feeling that I was of consequence sufficient to require a more formal audience, she took a steady and patient observation of me, and then resumed her labors. The little window, about six feet from the ground, threw a fine Rembrandt light upon me as I stood in my showy habiliments, endeavoring, by an imposing attitude, to exhibit myself to the best advantage.
“Forty-seven; Guava jelly, Sambo!—where is forty-seven?”
“Me no see him,” said Sambo; “missus eat him up, perhaps.”
“Monsonze! you filthy creature; look for it, sirrah!” So saying, Mrs. Davis applied her double eye-glass to her eyes, and again surveyed me for some seconds.
“You are the”—she hesitated—“the young person my friend Pike brought out, I believe?”
“Yes, my lady,” said I, bowing profoundly.