But for those who can appreciate plain fare, the little restaurant in the Rue des Ours will answer well their midday needs. There are few things more difficult to get than plain things done to perfection at a restaurant which thinks great guns—I mean great entrées—of itself. The most appetising breakfast dish I have ever had in my life—even now my lips long to make a certain appreciative sound in memory of it!—consisted of certain slices of bacon cooked at a little fire on an island, during a camping-out excursion on the river near Marlow some years ago. I may as well add that I had no share in the cooking of it, only in the eating of it.
Everybody sits at the little, narrow, long tables which are set at intervals over the little room with its sanded floor, at my restaurant, with the exception of those who sit at marble ones, which are there also, only in less numbers. I remember one special day when a paper had provided great food for excitement for two men who sat smoking in a corner and discussing matters of state over two cups of black coffee, which had been aided and abetted by two liqueurs. The woman, who was the middle-woman between the cook—or manufacturer—and the consumer, went to and fro rapidly, shouting from time to time, "Plats!" with the names of those required, with an added and imperative "Vite! Vite!"
From time to time a burning match from the pipes of the two conspirators fell as softly on the sanded floor as, on a November night, a shooting star sinks, and is extinguished on the dark sky. Presently, a bustling little man in a wide-awake entered with a huge pile of pink and yellow advertisement leaflets, it recommended some horloges, which had but recently swum "into the ken" of the inhabitants who live on the outskirts of Rue des Ours.
Immediately on entering, he saluted with confident and easy grace, and handed round with characteristic aplomb and dignity, the leaflets with which he identified himself for the time, though having no connection with the business with which they were concerned, save that of a purely temporary one. No Englishman could deliver leaflets like that. He would never take the trouble to attempt unfamiliar "airs and graces" to push someone else's concern. He would deliver simply and baldly, and would consider that good measure for his pay.
But the Frenchman's is "good measure running over," and his manner in doing it is half the battle, though the Englishman cannot understand how this can be so. I remember in this connection, an Englishwoman, who had lived much in France, saying to me the other day, à propos of Frenchwomen:
"They make charming speeches and compliments which one likes exceedingly to hear, until you find suddenly in some practical matter, some emergency, that they really mean nothing at all by them,—well then, when I recognised that, I just felt as if I'd no ground to go on at all, and I didn't care any longer for any of their professions.
"There is no real courtesy in the streets of Paris. Men jostle women right and left, it being at the passenger's own risk that the crossing of the street is performed.
"I never felt that I was a woman till I came to Paris: and there it is forced on one daily. The Parisian's view of a woman is not an ideal one."
To the diner, whose purse is light and whose needs are heavy and not satisfied by the fare of the restaurant in Rue des Ours, I would suggest the restaurant which is cheek by jowl with "Grosse Horloge." There, simplicity is more fully mated to variety, for you can depend upon three plats, and, unless one is a slave to luxury, these plats, well cooked even if plain, are amply sufficient to satisfy the cravings which begin below the belt, and end—in a good square meal. By the way, many waiters in these restaurants go upon some co-operative system, and all the "tips" that they receive at restaurants are put into a common box, which is placed on the desk of the chargé d'affaires. As each table empties, the waiter, in passing, drops his douceur through the narrow slit. My conviction is, that the workmen who are given pourboires do the same thing in the way of co-operation.
Over the little restaurant of which I have been speaking is the old gateway and tower of La Grosse Horloge. The bell here, called "Rouvel," dating back more than six centuries, has not been rung now for eight months, owing to its having become cracked. It weighs 1,500 kilogrammes. We went once into the belfry where the poor old bell, in its dotage, still hangs. Here in the draughty shuttered twilight, which is its constant environment, sounds unceasingly through each day and night, its mechanical heart-beats of "Teck-took"—"Teck-took"—"Teck—took," solemnly, slowly, unmelodiously.