At this moment a diversion was made by the entrance of a stout man with the smile of a clown and the short forked beard of a Mephistopheles, who took his place on Madame’s right.——
“Mon Dieu, Madame,” said he, as a plate of soup was put in front of him and the tureen carried away, “I came next to you because I love you; and you would starve me? You would give me no more soup!”
“But you are greedy,” said Madame.
—The soup, however, was left on a side table.——
“I have been starved already to-day,” he went on, before we had time to answer the question put to us. “I slept last night at a grand hôtel. It was so grand that this morning for breakfast they could give me but cutlets of mutton and cutlets of pork and ham—and ham, one knows it well, it counts for nothing. Is this not true, Madame?”
—He had had a wide and remarkable experience of hotels. He knew one. Ma foi! they swept it every day. But he knew another. Dame! there the floors were waxed and rubbed daily, so that if a beefsteak were to fall on them it would be as clean as if it fell upon a plate. For his part, however, he thought no hotel would be perfect until it made a law to give each guest a partridge and half a bottle of wine with his candle, in case of hunger during the night.
A little man with a light moustache, on Madame’s left, as he amiably filled her glass with wine and seltzer, recalled a certain town where the hotels were closed at ten. He arrived at midnight; every door was shut. What did he do? He could not sleep in the street. He went to the Mairie.
The man next to J—— had heard of a hotel where if you stayed out after ten they would not permit you to enter even if they had your baggage. The proprietor would come to a window above when you knocked, and throw your trunks down rather than open the door. He then made no charge.——
“Ma foi!” thought Mephistopheles, who could no more have begun a sentence without an ejaculation than he could have eaten his dinner without wine, “he would take the pavé and throw it at the head of such a proprietor.”
—Then they turned to hear our experience. They appealed to J——.