Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/108

28, 1860.] a winter green something like water-cresses, but which I never saw in England. There was as much light Bordeaux as we chose, a dessert, a cup of strong coffee, with the invariable petit verre as a finish.

These dinners had many charms in my eyes. They were served well, by Blot himself, and of course hot, for we were dining in the kitchen. Everything was probably inexpensive, but it was undeniably good. The bread was like a cake.

The Blots may not have made much profit by us, but our dining in the kitchen enabled them to have a better dinner than they otherwise would have had. Madame eats little, but she is a delicate feeder, and she and I perfectly agree on one point—we both love a change dearly. The same dish never appears twice in the same week, except by particular desire.

Women are very observing. Madame probably saw, from my habits of life, that my finances were not very flourishing; and when she gave me my bill at the end of the month, I was almost ashamed to pay it. There were several things to be learned in the kitchen. I saw how Blot made a potage au gras and a maigre, a purée of vegetables, a vol au vent, and above all a salad. I also learned how, with a handful of coals or charcoal, and a fourneau or range forty inches long and thirty-four wide, a dinner could be served hot and fresh for a party of eight. The fuel consumed in this kitchen in a year would not keep going the kitchen of an hotel of the same size in England for one week.

is a theory that the science of French cookery is a necessity consequent on the hardness of the beef and mutton, without which science no human stomach could digest them, and there would be an end to the population.

I have also a theory that the taste in dress displayed by a Frenchwoman, is a talent given to her by Providence to compensate for her ugliness, a talent without which she could not induce the male to marry her, and there would be an end to the population.

A Frenchwoman is the ugliest female of the human species. An African negress, with her flat nose and thick lips, is not very attractive; but her ugliness has a national type, and cases are known in which a European, after twenty years on the West Coast of Africa, and seeing nothing else to make him discontented, has become reconciled to her, as we do after a time to nearly everything else in the world, and as I did to the cooper on one side and to the chaudronnier on the other. But each individual Frenchwoman has an ugliness of her own, whether it be the ugliness of a tiger, or of a ferret, or of a monkey, or a combination of all three, in which last case, however, the monkey usually has a slight preponderance.

There is something fearful in the expression of a Frenchwoman of the lower orders when her animal instincts are excited—by jealousy, for instance, or when she is paying money, a severe trial to most faces. Come with me to-morrow to the Halle Centrale, a market for everything, near the church of St. Eustache. We will watch the women haggling and parting with money, and you will be satisfied, as I am, that within a not very long time previous to the historical period, the natives of France were crossed with a monkey. Look at that respectably dressed woman haggling for giblets! her hair comes down the ridge bone between her temple and forehead till it actually joins her eyebrows. This is a certain sign of there having been, some time or other, a monkey among the branches of the family pedigree. Even in a ball-room, where she is all smiles, and is looking all she knows, a Frenchwoman will try—for she is a great general—to divert your attention from her face to her dress; but do not be diverted; look at her features, and you will see nothing but tiger, ferret, and monkey.

Oh, my fair fellow-countrywomen! what a comfort it is for us to think that you can give a Frenchwoman all her petty arts of dress, and still beat her! Yet you might show a little more taste in your choice of colours, for I have had to blush for many of you lately in the Bois de Boulogne.

These remarks are necessary as a preface to an introduction to my landlady.

Dear Madame Blot! you are the kindest and best of women: you were a mother to me when I was in sickness and poverty. But you are plain, even for a Frenchwoman. Yet so neat and tasteful is your poplin dress, so well does that ribbon suit your grey cat’s eyes, and your outward cuticle (it cannot be called a complexion), so elegant are your manners, and so charming is your conversation, that it would be an actual intrusion to look at your face.

Like all her race, Madame has a scrubby head of hair—but I will not describe her, for, to tell the truth, I was in the house for a whole winter, and never looked at her face but once, and that once quite by accident in the beginning of spring. I would have left Paris in total ignorance of what she was like, if her parrot (such a parrot! although born in Martinique, it has a much better Parisian accent than either I or the garçon) had not bit her finger one dull day. Parrots are subject to dyspepsia in dull weather. Madame had a weak moment, and did what few women can afford to do—she frowned. I took a side-look at her face, and the illusion was over. We remained good friends, but from that moment to the day of my departure she was moité tigre, moitié singe.

Madame has thirty-eight years, and the beautiful figure of a woman of five-and-twenty—without stays. Her vanity requests me to satisfy myself on this point. A fine foot and ankle, also called to my notice on the plea of her suffering from cold feet. She says she gave way early in life to the use of a chaufferette, till at last it is of no use to her.

“Would Monsieur feel her feet?”

The foot and leg were cold indeed—cold as marble, and well chiselled marble, too.

I cannot give a very clear account of my landlord, or as Madame calls him, Mon Blot, on ordinary occasions, or mon chéri when she wants anything. He is about fifty, a thorough Frenchman, with a deal of devilry and bonhommie, and a stubble head. He talks freely on most subjects,