Disgusted as I was by this shocking sight, I stood watching all that went forward within with a strange interest. It was a scene of incessant bustle and movement, for now, as one o'clock drew nigh, various dinners were getting ready for the prisoners, while parties of their friends were assembling inside. Of these latter, there seemed persons of every rank and condition: some, dressed in all the brilliancy of the mode; others, whose garments bespoke direst poverty. There were women, too, whose costume emulated the classic drapery of the ancients, and who displayed, in their looped togas, no niggard share of their forms; while others, in shabby mourning, sat in obscure corners, not noticing the scene before them, nor noticed themselves. A strange equipage, with two horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, stood at the door; and as I looked, a pale, haggard-looking man, whose foppery in dress contrasted oddly with his care-worn expression, hurried from the shop, and sprung into the carriage. In doing so, a pocket-book fell from his pocket. I took it up, but as I did so, the carriage was already away, and far beyond my power to overtake it.
Without stopping to examine my prize, or hesitating for a second, I entered the restaurant, and asked for M. Boivin.
"Give your orders to me, boy," said a man busily at work behind the counter.
"My business is with himself," said I, stoutly.
"Then you'll have to wait with some patience," said he, sneeringly.
"I can do so," was my answer, and I sat down in the shop.
I might have been half-an-hour thus seated, when an enormously fat man, with a huge "bonnet rouge" on his head, entered from an inner room, and, passing close to where I was, caught sight of me.
"Who are you, sirrah—what brings you here?"
"I want to speak with M. Boivin."
"Then speak," said he, placing his hand upon his immense chest.