A PLUNGE INTO THE UNKNOWN—ARRIVAL AT PAUILLAC.
bank of the Mississippi in search of the city of Eden. How did we know what sort of stifling den above a restaurant it would be that the sailor called a hotel? How did we know what compôtes of grease and garlic we might have to eat there? We breathed more freely when we were deposited in the narrow hall of a house that had something of the air of a real hotel, and were met by an obsequious garçon and a highly-respectable smell of beefsteak. We were shown our room, a palatially large one, with a light paper that would be an excellent background for mosquito-hunting, and we were told that table d’hôte was nearly over, but that we could have whatever we wished.
We said, ‘Œufs sur le plat,’ as we always feebly do when in doubt, and descended to a very warm and dinnerish little salle-à-manger, full of black-haired fat men, and black bottles of vin ordinaire, and pervaded by the satisfaction of those who have dined largely and well.
Much strange talk buzzed round us in the thick Bordelais accent, while we waited for our eggs on the
THE DOG APPROACHED WITH A SLOW POLITENESS.
plate: excited harangues about vintages and grapes, that bristled with facts so esoteric and so solid that my cousin said she would fetch the note-book at once, and slipped away with the graceful bow to the company that we had observed society at Pauillac demanded. I had embarked on the eggs before she came back, and was thinking how I could best express the curious flavour of the grease in which they were cooked, when I heard a slight scuffle at the door, and saw my cousin dart in with inflated eyes of terror, followed by a black boar-hound of about four feet high, on whose back was clinging a monkey of more than usually human and terrifying aspect. The dog approached with a slow politeness, and, as he came, the monkey leaped to and fro from his back to the tables, the chairs, the handle of the door, anything in fact within reach of his chain that presented a surface of a quarter of an inch, with the swinging bound and rebound of a toy on a piece of indiarubber. We cowered behind our table, and the danger was for the time averted by the intervention of some personal friend of the monkey, who, to our unspeakable thankfulness, took him out of the room.
But that night, when we had forgotten the incident and were going up the dark staircase to our room, my cousin, who was in the rear, uttered suddenly the most vulgar, kitchenmaid’s shriek I have ever heard, and fled past me in a state bordering on convulsions, with a dark object swinging from the skirt of her dress.