The morning dawned chill and gray; already some of the visitors had arrived. Some were heavy, serious-looking gentlemen in Duc d’Orléans beards and yachting clothes. Others wore a judicial air more in keeping with their costume, which included top hats and frock coats. Flags and pennants fluttered from the terraces. Bunting draped from the shield of the République Française ornamented the judges’ stand from which the prizes were to be given.
ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE REGATTA
Orders were shouted on the river through megaphones for the laying of the course. The maître d’hôtel looked haggard and careworn. He gave orders which were never carried out.
“Imbécile, have you prepared your butter?” he cried to one of his staff, a clean-shaven little man whose face bore the intelligence of a ground mole. “Idiot,” he bawled at a third, “didn’t I tell you the six-franc ducks were on the left side of the cold room back of the two-franc pâtés de foie gras?”
Only the two chefs hired from Paris seemed placid. They stirred their sauces, poked up their fires, and then leaned out of their kitchen window as coolly as an engineer and fireman waiting for orders to go ahead. It was noon. The crowd along the terrace was cheering. The rowers had arrived—a score of spindle-legged youths with their overcoats thrown over their shoulders to protect them from the chill wind. Bleak clouds hung heavily in the northwest. Suddenly came a blinding flash of lightning, the thunder boomed, and down came the rain.
It struck in sheets in the garden and drenched the beautiful blue-and-gold hotel and the waiting crowd, and pattered the river into a dull leaden gray.
It filled the wine-glasses and the soup-plates for the feast of sixty, formed in little pools around the hors d’oeuvres, and soaked the linen. It totally demoralized the head waiter, madame the proprietress, and the regatta. But the two chefs leaning out of their window again, smiled. They had been paid.
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith