Mr. Nibby was profoundly interested. He forgot how he felt for ten minutes at least. This was the very girl he had assisted on the Cologne boat in the autumn. The service rendered was a trifling one: her pocket had been picked coming on board the steamer; she was alone and frightened; evidently the official was sceptical as to her story, when Mr. Nibby stepped in opportunely, paid for another ticket and took the young girl under his own protection to the extent of frowning upon the advances of certain other tourists of a pronounced type. She had explained with simplicity and dignity of manner that she was journeying to Bonn for the purpose of applying to a great lady for the position of companion, and had only just quitted the school where she was educated. Then she had gone ashore at Bonn with shyly-expressed thanks, and Mr. Nibby, good Samaritan by the way, had been swept on by the Rhine to distant Mayence. Here she was again, at Mentone, tripping through that tropical garden with its palms, oranges, and mantling heliotrope, with the sunshine playing over her blond hair and fair face, the blue muslin robe a bright and charming element of color.
The garçon appeared with Mr. Nibby's déjeuner as he turned away from the window.
"Salad? No, I detest the sight and smell of oil," said Mr. Nibby pettishly in response to an inquiry: then he added, in gloomy soliloquy, "I wish there was not such an article as a beefsteak in the world."
The garçon stared at Mr. Nibby sympathetically. He was a chuckle-headed youth in a black coat with tails that threatened to sweep the ground, and a white cravat of stiffest quality and enormous dimensions. It might have wrung the chef's heart to have beheld Mr. Nibby turn over his dainty beefsteak with a fork and sniff at it disdainfully, but he was fortunately spared that spectacle. Mr. Nibby, in his truly alarming state of health, was restricted by his physician to the simplest diet: thus the chef's beefsteak had become the bane of his existence. He was like the needy adventurer who subsisted on pigeons for a month to win a wager, or the prisoner who starved on chocolate. He lost no time in making inquiries about the Fräulein Rottenhöfer, and the sympathetic garçon, although still a fledgling in years and with a down on his upper lip like that on a gosling's back, immediately saw his way clearly to fresh perquisites of office. If Mr. Nibby, occupant of the best suite of rooms in the hotel, was interested in a lady, any stray news concerning her fetched by himself would naturally result in francs. There was an abundance to impart at the outset. Mr. Nibby, kind of heart, left the detested beefsteak to grow cold while he listened, although that sacrifice was not a great one.
The Baroness von Merk was very old and paralytic, and possessed a fearful temper. The sympathetic garçon drew the cork of a wine-bottle, and opined that she was mad. She had been a celebrated court beauty in one of the German principalities, perhaps married with the left hand by the duke, and still retained fantastic caprices as the dregs in her spent cup of pleasure. Her own relatives had been driven away by her evil and malicious tongue. Her servants lived in purgatory, but then they received good wages, the garçon affirmed solemnly as he removed the cover of a potato-dish. What would monsieur think of her slapping the Fräulein with a fan for not reading distinctly or for not retrimming a lace mantle to please such a whimsical mistress? Old Margret, the lady's-maid, was kept awake night after night to watch beside the baroness's couch when she was nervous and feared the ghosts of her own past. Fritz was the gray-haired person in livery, who had served too long to permit his own digestion to be disturbed.
"The women cry, but I do not. I have lived with her forty years," Fritz observed in those kitchen regions where the faults of the great are freely criticised, with a gesture toward his cheeks, in texture like parchment.
When Mr. Nibby heard this sad tale of petty tyranny his sympathies were moved. He had bought a fresh ticket on the Cologne boat which consigned the Fräulein to the tender mercies of the baroness. He began to experience a degree of personal responsibility in the whole matter. How could he help the girl out of her painful position now?
"Dear me!" ejaculated Mr. Nibby, pushing aside the untasted beefsteak, and the garçon subsequently devoured it by stealth, seated on the back stairs with a tray balanced precariously on his knees.
Our invalid continued to say "Dear me!" during his afternoon drive, and on returning to the hotel either the lack of that matutinal beefsteak or interest in the Fräulein Rottenhöfer induced him to announce that he would dine at the table d'hôte. What need to add that the sympathetic garçon placed him beside the Fräulein, who appeared slightly startled at first, and then pleased? When the companion had begged to be spared the ordeal of eating alone at the table d'hôte, the baroness had insisted on compliance: her dame de compagnie always dined at the table d'hôte. Good often results from evil in this world.
Mr. Nibby enjoyed the meal amazingly. The salle-à-manger was decked with flowers, the table linen was snowy white, the plate glittered, and there was as a central ornament a mediæval castle of spun sugar perched on almond rocks, which must have cost the chef much time to design. It was the fête of madame's patron saint, and the church-bells which had resounded in the town since dawn meant also a dinner of unusual elegance at the Hôtel des Jasmins, concluded by champagne of inferior quality, but freely dispensed to all. The saint had brought her very good luck, madame piously observed. Thus the meal was a sort of feast to Mr. Nibby and the Fräulein. Both remembered the Cologne boat, and she required no other incentive than gratitude to prompt inquiry as to her benefactor's health. There are more unfavorable places for growth of mutual confidence than a table d'hôte. Amidst a hum of voices and clatter of dishes, with many lights twinkling before his dazzled eyes, Mr. Nibby became aware that the Fräulein had an aunt living in America, whom she desired to visit, although her ideas of distance were of the vaguest. Poor Fräulein! belonging to that vast army of educated women teeming in every land and needing to coin money out of their accomplishments, she must wait on the whimsical old baroness a while longer before making a journey to distant America.