Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/71

Rh fat woman, like the cook of an English kitchen; I imagined a man, somewhat advanced in age, and retaining some traces of the ancien regime, with large features and a small body, with grizzly and half-powdered hair, and, perhaps, a pigtail; at all events, with slippers down at heel, hands unclean, and a large snuff-box. It was, therefore, not without surprise that I found the very contrary of this in the personage who, dressed in a white apron, white sleeves, and white night cap of unexceptionable cleanness, and bowing with a grace that would have done credit to the most accomplished petit mâitre of the last century, proceeded to relate how he had been instructed in the art of making chicken broth by an English Miledi, who in passing into Italy for the benefit of her health, had staid some weeks at the Hotel de l'Europe. His detail of the process of broth-making was minute, and no doubt scientific, but unhappily for the narrator, it was interrupted by his producing a delicate white fowl, which he without ceremony laid on the kitchen table, which stood in the middle of the room, and rivalled the very walls themselves in blackness. I was assured, by the first glance at this table, by reason of the fragments of fish, fowl, and pastry, strewed over it, that the same piece of furniture served every purpose of chopping-block and paste-board. When, therefore, under these circumstances, I saw the preparation for the broth just going to commence, the exclamation of "Dirty pigs!" was making its way to my lips, and I, in order to avoid outraging the ears of French politeness, in the spot of all France most famous for the romantic, made the best of my way out of the kitchen, and endeavoured, when the next dinner-time arrived, to forget that I had ever seen it. Whenever afterwards the figure of this black table appeared to my fancy, like a spectre rising to warn me against tasteful and delicate looking entremets, I strove to forget the reality; but I never recovered the feeling of perfect security in what I was about to eat until the sea again rolled between me and the kitchen of the Hotel de l'Europe, and I again actually saw the clear bright fire, the whitened hearth, the yellow-ochred walls, the polished tins, the clean-scrubbed tables and chairs, and the white dresser cloths, of the kitchen, such as I had always been used to see at my own home.