A sailor—especially one fresh from the chateau of Brest,—is not apt to be over nice in the article of cookery, and I readily accompanied my knight of the rueful countenance to his table d’hôte, which I found to be a long oval board, three fourths bare of cloth and guests, while five human visages clustered around its end.
I took my seat opposite a trim dashing brunette, with the brightest eyes and rosiest cheeks imaginable. Her face was so healthily refreshing in the midst of malady and death, that I altogether forgot the cholera under the charm of her ardent gaze. Next me sat a comical sort of fellow, who did not delay in scraping an acquaintance, and jocularly insisted on introducing all the company.
“It’s a case of emergency,” said the droll, “we have no time to lose or to stand on the ceremony of fashionable etiquette. Here to-day, gone to-morrow—is the motto of Marseilles! Hola! Messieurs, shall we not make the most of new acquaintances when they may be so brief?”
I thanked him for his hospitality. I had so little to lose in this world, either of property or friends, that I feared the cholera quite as slightly as any of the company. “A thousand thanks,” said I, “Monsieur, for your politeness; I’ll bury you to-morrow, if it is the cholera’s pleasure, with ten times more pleasure now that I have had the honor of an introduction. A fashionable man hardly cares to be civil to a stranger—even if he happens to be a corpse!”
There was so hearty a cheer at this sally, that, in spite of the shallow soundings of my purse, I called for a fresh bottle, and pledged the party in a bumper all round.
“And now,” continued my neighbor, “as it may be necessary for some one of us to write your epitaph in a day or two, or, at least, to send a message of condolence and sympathy to your friends; pray let us know a bit of your history, and what the devil brings you to Marseilles when the cholera thermometer is up to 1000 degrees per diem?”
Very few words were necessary to impart such a name and tale as I chose to invent for the company’s edification. “Santiago Ximenes,” and my tawny skin betokened my nationality and profession, while my threadbare garments spoke louder than words that I was at suit with Fortune.
Presently, after a lull in the chat, a dapper little prig of a dandy, who sat on my left, volunteered to inform me that he was no less a personage than le Docteur Du Jean, a medical practitioner fresh from Metropolitan hospitals, who, in a spirit of the loftiest philanthropy, visited this provincial town at his own expense to succor the poor.
“C’est une belle dame, notre vis à vis, n’est elle pas mon cher?” said he pointing to our patron saint opposite.
I admitted without argument that she was the most charming woman I ever saw out of Cuba.