Then, with evident pride, she threw open the door of what was evidently the public bedchamber of the inn.
Let not the reader take alarm. In these out-of-the-way places such accommodation is often all that is offered the traveller, namely, a spacious room, set round with four posters, each well curtained, so as to form a tiny room in itself. As women never, or very rarely, travel in such regions, the chief patrons being commis-voyageurs and soldiers, the inconvenience is not great. The bedding looked good and clean, and the room was airy.
We opened the window. Madame complacently spread a snowy cloth, then, with the airy aplomb of a head waiter of some famous restaurant, say, the Chapeau Rouge at Bordeaux, asked:
'And what would these ladies like for breakfast?'
There seemed cruel, double-edged irony in the question. What could we expect in such a place but just something to stay the cravings of hunger: that something rendered uneatable by the terribly dirty—no, let me say, smoke-dried—look of the speaker, who seemed to be cook and waitress in one?
'Suppose we have an omelette?' suggested my young friend.
An omelette cooked by those hands! The very notion took away my appetite; however, there were new-laid eggs, and no matter the unwashed condition of the cook, the inside of a boiled egg may always be eaten with impunity. We could have anything we chose by waiting a little, our hostess said—mutton cutlets, roast chicken, partridges, fish, vegetables; the resources of that rustic larder seemed inexhaustible. Then she had choice wine, Burgundy and Bordeaux, besides liqueurs, in the cellar.
We had no time or inclination for a feast, but made an excellent meal—what with the eggs and a tiny leg of cold-boiled mutton, I do honestly believe the very best I ever tasted in my life.
The mountain-fed mutton of these regions is renowned, and the country folk boil it with just a slice of garlic by way of a flavour.
This dingy little wayside hostelry could really offer a first-rate ordinary, and, on principles not to be controverted, guests here pay, not according to what they order, but the quantity they eat. Would that all restaurant-keepers were equally conscientious!