Mary Dean.
THE CHEF'S BEEFSTEAK
On the morning of the twenty-fifth of February, Mr. Nibby glanced out of the window and unhesitatingly pronounced himself the most miserable man in Mentone. There is a certain savage joy in such a conviction of supreme wretchedness, and Mr. Nibby, while he called himself the most miserable of men, experienced a feeling of satisfaction and was conscious of a pre-eminence among his fellow-creatures. At the same moment Fräulein Rottenhöfer looked forth from the window above, her blond hair dishevelled, her eyes red with weeping, and wrung her hands with a gesture of passionate despair. "Oh, why was I ever born?" she sighed.
To a casual and philosophical observer the disquiet of these two people might have seemed sufficiently perplexing, unless he had remembered that our world lies within ourselves, and not in external circumstance. They happened to gaze from their respective windows at the same time, with this abstracted aspect, unaware of their mutual propinquity and unacquainted with each other's history: the two stories of the hotel might well have represented separate worlds. Fräulein Rottenhöfer had travelled from Bonn to Mentone in the train of that distinguished invalid the Baroness von Merk: Mr. Nibby was a forlorn waif from the New World. He wore at this hour an Oriental dressing-gown of gorgeous hues, but he had laid aside his cigar unsmoked, and his face was sallow with illness as he presented it to the sun's pitiless inspection.
The beauty of the scene on which Fräulein Rottenhöfer looked with that hand-wringing of desperation, and Mr. Nibby below stairs, in the gorgeous dressing-gown, surveyed so dolefully, is unsurpassed on that coast of enchantment, the Riviera—realm of pure skies, purple mountains capped by glittering snow-peaks, the smoky gray of olive-orchards, and gleaming sea acquiring the splendor of melting jewels in the glow of fiery sunsets. The Hôtel des Jasmins was a small establishment of exquisite elegance and the highest reputation: its fame for select privacy, an irreproachable cuisine and lovely surroundings may be said to have gone forth to all lands. The chef was known to be an artist for whose valuable services the proprietors of other mansions had basely plotted and conspired, as the Hôtel des Jasmins was kept by a woman; but, fortunately, their evil endeavors had been thus far frustrated by the devotion of the great man to madame's interests. Countless nobles had appended their names to the glorious record of the office register: Belgian counts, French marquises and German princes had all been sheltered beneath this roof and reflected lustre on the name of the hotel. The suite of rooms through which plain, republican Mr. Nibby now prowled like an unhappy ghost had once been tenanted by an English lord, who had been kind enough to depart this life in the state bed.
"What shall I try next?" quoth Mr. Nibby gloomily, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of the dressing-gown. Then he opened the sash and leaned one elbow on the window-ledge.
The whole garden sparkled with the morning freshness. Marble steps led down to the green sward; the balustrade was draped in a luxuriant mantle of heliotrope that loaded the air with the fragrance of clustering blossoms; the beds of roses and geranium swept like a wave of color in the direction of those nooks of shrubbery where the fervent heat of noonday was tempered by a canopy of delicate foliage. Mr. Nibby's eye roved languidly over the fountain with its column of silvery spray and gushing spouts formed by the gaping mouths of grotesque heads. Mr. Nibby detested that fountain: its babbling music kept him awake at night. Beyond the garden was a margin of rustling palms and a glimpse of blue Mediterranean sea. If any aspect of Nature could lure forth a man into the balmy beauty of a perfect day, it must be such a vision of loveliness as this one—the garden blooming with a Southern warmth of color and richness of perfume, that margin of palms affording views of the sea—a crystal shield—and on the other side a reach of orange plantation, the boughs powdered with snowy blossoms.
The weak human clay asserted itself instead, and Mr. Nibby merely groaned. He had passed a sleepless night; he was wretchedly ill; and, so far from improving his health by journeying in Europe, as he had hoped to do, he now looked back regretfully to the days when he suffered from mild dyspepsia in his native land. Constant nausea had afflicted the unfortunate gentleman since he came to the Mediterranean shore and took up his residence at the charming Hôtel des Jasmins, where madame made out the most extortionate bills, although he subsisted on the sparsest diet.
"I might be poisoned," soliloquized Mr. Nibby with another groan.