They were making fun of me I thought, and turned my head away. It would not do to get angry with half a dozen jovial Frenchmen.
“All Coons Look alike to Me,” I recognized, though they sang but fragments of the text.
Through a corner of my eye I saw them all anxiously staring at me; then one of the merrymakers came over to me. I had a fleeting thought of a row before he bowed low and said in English:
“If you please, we make good time, we sing your songs, and must be happy to drink with you.”
He announced himself as M. Edmond Brault, chief clerk of the office of the secretary-general, fresh-faced, glowing and with a soul for music and for joy. He was so smiling, so ingenuous, that to refuse him would have been rank discourtesy. I joined the group.
“I am twenty-eight times married this day,” said M. Brault, “and my friends and I make very happy.”
The good husband was rejoicing on his wedding anniversary, and I could but accept the champagne he ordered. “I am great satisfaction to drink you,” he said. “My friends drink my wife and me.”
We toasted his admirable wife, we toasted the two republics; Lafayette, Rochambeau, and Chateaubriand.
“Ah, le biftek!” said M. Leboucher.
We toasted Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and then we sang for an hour. M. Brault was the leading composer of Tahiti. He was the creator of Tahitian melodies, as Kappelmeister Berger was of Hawaiian. For our delectation Brault sang ten of his songs between toasts. I liked best “Le Bon Roi Pomare,” the words of one of the many stanzas being: