For What
Struck Me Above All In It Was The Note Of The Midi,
As He Has Represented It, - The
Sound of universal talk.
The landlord sat at supper with sundry friends, in a
kind of glass cage, with a
Genial indifference to arriv-
ing guests; the waiters tumbled over the loose luggage
in the hall; the travellers who had been turned away
leaned gloomily against door-posts; and the landlady,
surrounded by confusion, unconscious of responsibility,
and animated only by the spirit of conversation, bandied
high-voiced compliments with the _voyageurs de com-
merce_. At ten o'clock in the morning there was a
table d'hote for breakfast, - a wonderful repast, which
overflowed into every room and pervaded the whole
establishment. I sat down with a hundred hungry
marketers, fat, brown, greasy men, with a good deal of
the rich soil of Languedoc adhering to their hands
and their boots. I mention the latter articles because
they almost put them on the table. It was very hot,
and there were swarms of flies; the viands had the
strongest odor; there was in particular a horrible mix-
ture known as _gras-double_, a light gray, glutinous,
nauseating mess, which my companions devoured in
large quantities. A man opposite to me had the dir-
tiest fingers I ever saw; a collection of fingers which
in England would have excluded him from a farmers'
ordinary. The conversation was mainly bucolic; though
a part of it, I remember, at the table at which I sat,
consisted of a discussion as to whether or no the maid-
servant were _sage_, - a discussion which went on under
the nose of this young lady, as she carried about the
dreadful _gras-double_, and to which she contributed
the most convincing blushes.
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