The Rather Dreary Whimsicality Of This Stage Of The Proceedings, Is
Interrupted By An Announcement From The Brave (He Had Been Cooking)
That Supper Is Ready; And To The Priest's Chamber (The Next Room
And The Counterpart Of Mine) We All Adjourn.
The first dish is a
cabbage, boiled with a great quantity of rice in a tureen full of
water, and flavoured with cheese.
It is so hot, and we are so
cold, that it appears almost jolly. The second dish is some little
bits of pork, fried with pigs' kidneys. The third, two red fowls.
The fourth, two little red turkeys. The fifth, a huge stew of
garlic and truffles, and I don't know what else; and this concludes
the entertainment.
Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of the
dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, in the
middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like Birnam Wood
taking a winter walk. He kindles this heap in a twinkling, and
produces a jorum of hot brandy and water; for that bottle of his
keeps company with the seasons, and now holds nothing but the
purest eau de vie. When he has accomplished this feat, he retires
for the night; and I hear him, for an hour afterwards, and indeed
until I fall asleep, making jokes in some outhouse (apparently
under the pillow), where he is smoking cigars with a party of
confidential friends. He never was in the house in his life
before; but he knows everybody everywhere, before he has been
anywhere five minutes; and is certain to have attracted to himself,
in the meantime, the enthusiastic devotion of the whole
establishment.
This is at twelve o'clock at night. At four o'clock next morning,
he is up again, fresher than a full-blown rose; making blazing
fires without the least authority from the landlord; producing mugs
of scalding coffee when nobody else can get anything but cold
water; and going out into the dark streets, and roaring for fresh
milk, on the chance of somebody with a cow getting up to supply it.
While the horses are 'coming,' I stumble out into the town too. It
seems to be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing in
and out of the arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it
is profoundly dark, and raining heavily; and I shouldn't know it
to-morrow, if I were taken there to try. Which Heaven forbid.
The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, the driver
swears; sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan oaths.
Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he begins with
Christianity and merges into Paganism. Various messengers are
despatched; not so much after the horses, as after each other; for
the first messenger never comes back, and all the rest imitate him.
At length the horses appear, surrounded by all the messengers; some
kicking them, and some dragging them, and all shouting abuse to
them.
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