Now, my system in life was that so well and popularly known by the name of M. Guizot, “la paix à tout prix;” and I take pride to myself in thinking that I have carried it out with more success. With a firm resolve, therefore, that no temptation should induce me to deviate from a pacific policy, I entered the kitchen, where the “lower house” was then “in committee,”—the “cook in the chair”!
“Here he com, now!” said Blackie; and the assembly grew hushed as I entered.
“Ay, here he comes!” said I, re-echoing the speech; “and let us see if we shall not be merry comrades.”
The address was a happy one; and that evening closed upon me in the very pinnacle of popularity.
I have hesitated for some time whether I should not ask of my reader to enroll himself for a short space as a member of “the establishment,” or even to sojourn one day beneath a roof where so many originals were congregated; to witness the very table itself, set out with its artificial fruits and flowers, its pine-apples in wax, and its peaches of paper,—all the appliances by which Mrs. D., in her ardent zeal, hoped to propagate refinement and abstemiousness; high-breeding and low diet being, in her esteem, inseparably united. To see the company, the poor old faded and crushed flowers of mock gentility,—widows and unmarried daughters of tax-collectors long “gathered;” polite storekeepers, and apothecaries to the “Forces,” cultivating the Graces at the cost of their appetites, and descending, in costumes of twenty years back, in the pleasing delusion of being “dressed” for dinner; while here and there some unhappy skipper, undergoing a course of refinement, looked like a bear in a “ballet,” ashamed of his awkwardness, and even still more ashamed of the company wherein he found himself; and, lastly, some old Seigneur of the Lower Province,—a poor, wasted, wrinkled creature, covered with hair-powder and snuff, but yet, strangely enough, preserving some “taste of his once quality,” and not altogether destitute of the graces of the land he sprung from;—curious and incongruous elements to make up society, and worthy of the presidency of that greater incongruity who ruled them.
Condemned to eat food they did not relish, and discuss themes they did not comprehend,—what a noble zeal was theirs! What sacrifices did they not make to the genius of “gentility”! If they would sneer at a hash, Mrs. D.'s magic wand charmed it into a “ragout;” when they almost sneezed at the sour wine, Mrs. D. called for another glass of “La Rose.” “Rabbits,” they were assured, were the daily diet of the Duke of Devonshire, and Lady Laddington ate kid every day at dinner. In the same way, potatoes were vulgar things, but “pommes de terre à la maître d'hôtel” were a delicacy for royalty.
To support these delusions of diet, I was everlastingly referred to. “Cregan,” would she say,—placing her glass to her eye, and fixing on some dish, every portion of which her own dainty fingers had compounded,—“Cregan, what is that?”
“Poulet à la George Quatre, madame! “—she always permitted me to improvise the nomenclature,—“the receipt came from the Bishop of Beldoff's cook.”
“Ah, prepared with olives, I believe?”
“Exactly, madame,” would I say, presenting the dish, whose success was at once assured.