Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/222

198 ordered, the price was arranged, and all that remained to be done was for the pastry-cook to write down his customer's name and address.

"Volney," said the stranger.

"Volney!" roared the cook, who was as great a royalist as his former master, De Capellis,—"Volney! Volney!"

I wish I could have painted him in his wrath, with his white cap on his head, his apron tucked up, and a big knife stuck in his belt. Quitting his stove and its saucepans he came forward, and cried in a voice of thunder,—though his indignation caused it to tremble—

"Get out of here, you scoundrel! Get out of my kitchen, you accursed atheist. You confounded revolutionist, you have robbed me of two-thirds of the money I had invested in Government Stocks. I don't work for"— (I have toned down his remarks)—"people of your kind. My stove shall never get hot for you,"

And the famous, or too famous, Mon-