In the Days of My Youth Part 43

"I mean that I have no mind to dine first, and be kicked out of doors afterwards. It is one of those aids to digestion that I can willingly dispense with."

"But if I guarantee that the dinner shall be paid for--money down!"

"Tra la la!"

"You don't believe me? Well, come and see."

With this, he went up to Madame Marotte, who, with her niece, had sat down on a bench under a walnut-tree close by, waiting our pleasure.

"Would not these ladies prefer to rest here, while we seek for a suitable restaurant and order the dinner?" said Muller insinuatingly.

The old lady looked somewhat blank. She was not too tired to go on--thought it a pity to bring us all the way back again--would do, however, as "_ces messieurs_" pleased; and so was left sitting under the walnut-tree, reluctant and disconsolate.

"_Tiens! mon enfant_" I heard her say as we turned away, "suppose they don't come back again!"

We had promised to be gone not longer, than twenty minutes, or at most half an hour. Muller led the way straight to the _Toison d' Or_.

I took him by the arm as we neared the gate.

"Steady, steady, _mon gaillard_" I said. "We don't order our dinner, you know, till we've found the money to pay for it."

"True--but suppose I go in here to look for it?"

"Into the restaurant garden?"

"Precisely."

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE PEt.i.t COURIER ILl.u.s.tRe.

THE _Toison d' Or_ was but a modest little establishment as regarded the house, but it was surrounded on three sides by a good-sized garden overlooking the river. Here, in the trellised arbors which lined the lawn on either side, those customers who preferred the open air could take their dinners, coffees, and absinthes _al fresco_.

The scene when we arrived was at its gayest. There were dinners going on in every arbor; waiters running distractedly to and fro with trays and bottles; two women, one with a guitar, the other with a tamborine, singing under a tree in the middle of the garden; while in the air there reigned an exhilarating confusion of sounds and smells impossible to describe.

We went in. Muller paused, looked round, captured a pa.s.sing waiter, and asked for Monsieur le proprietaire. The waiter pointed over his shoulder towards the house, and breathlessly rushed on his way.

Muller at once led the way into a salon on the ground-floor looking over the garden.

Here we found ourselves in a large low room containing some thirty or forty tables, and fitted up after the universal restaurant pattern, with cheap-looking gla.s.ses, rows of hooks, and spittoons in due number. The air was heavy with the combined smells of many dinners, and noisy with the clatter of many tongues. Behind the fruits, cigars, and liqueur bottles that decorated the _comptoir_ sat a plump, black-eyed little woman in a gorgeous cap and a red silk dress. This lady welcomed us with a bewitching smile and a gracious inclination of the head.

"_Ces messieurs_," she said, "will find a vacant table yonder, by the window."

Muller bowed majestically.

"Madame," he said, "I wish to see Monsieur le proprietaire."

The dame de comptoir looked very uneasy.

"If Monsieur has any complaint to make," she said, "he can make it to me."

"Madame, I have none."

"Or if it has reference to the ordering of a dinner...."

Muller smiled loftily.

"Dinner, Madame," he said, with a disdainful gesture, "is but one of the accidents common to humanity. A trifle! A trifle always humiliating--sometimes inconvenient--occasionally impossible. No, Madame, mine is a serious mission; a mission of the highest importance, both socially and commercially. May I beg that you will have the goodness to place my card in the hands of Monsieur le proprietaire, and say that I request the honor of five minutes' interview."

The little woman's eyes had all this time been getting rounder and blacker. She was evidently confounded by my friend's grandiloquence.

"_Ah! mon Dieu! M'sieur_," she said, nervously, "my husband is in the kitchen. It is a busy day with us, you understand--but I will send for him."

And she forthwith despatched a waiter for "Monsieur Choucru."

Muller seized me by the arm.

"Heavens!" he exclaimed, in a very audible aside, "did you hear? She is his wife! She is Madame Choucru?"

"Well, and what of that?"

"What of that, indeed? _Mais, mon ami_, how can you ask the question?

Have you no eyes? Look at her! Such a remarkably handsome woman--such a _tournure_--such eyes--such a figure for an ill.u.s.tration! Only conceive the effect of Madame Choucru--in medallion!"

"Oh, magnificent!" I replied. "Magnificent--in medallion."

But I could not, for the life of me, imagine what he was driving at.

"And it would make the fortune of the _Toison d'Or_" he added, solemnly.

To which I replied that it would undoubtedly do so.

Monsieur Choucru now came upon the scene; a short, rosy, round-faced little man in a white flat cap and bibbed ap.r.o.n--like an elderly cherub that had taken to cookery. He hung back upon the threshold, wiping his forehead, and evidently unwilling to show himself in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.

"Here, _mon bon_," cried Madame, who was by this time crimson with gratified vanity, and in a fever of curiosity; "this way--the gentleman is waiting to speak to you!"

Monsieur, the cook and proprietor, shuffled his feet to and fro in the doorway, but came no nearer.

"_Parbleu_!" he said, "if M'sieur's business is not urgent."

"It is extremely urgent, Monsieur Choucru," replied Muller; "and, moreover, it is not so much my business as it is yours,"

"Ah bah! if it is my business, then, it may stand over till to-morrow,"

replied the little man, impatiently. "To-day I have eighty dinners on hand, and with M'sieur's permission"....

But Muller strode to the door and caught him by the shoulder.