Bohemian Days: Three American Tales. George Alfred Townsend
Oct. 30.
"The system wins! To-day and yesterday I took seven thousand one hundred francs. I have selected the 4th of November to break the bank.
"Auburn Risque."
VI.
THE OLD REVELRY REVIVED.
The Colony would have shouted over Master Lees' coffin at the receipt of such intelligence. They gave a genuine American cheer, nine times repeated, with the celebrated "tiger" of the Texan Rangers, as it had been reported to them. Mr. Simp read the dispatch to the concierge, who brightened up, begged his pardon, and hoped that he would forget words said in anger.
"Madam," said Mr. Simp, with some dignity, "I have suffered and forgotten much in this establishment; we have an aphorism, relative to the last feather, in the English tongue. But lend me one hundred francs till my instalment arrives from Germany, and I will forgive even the present insult."
"Boys!" cried Andy Plade, "let us have a supper! We—that is, you—can take the telegram to our several creditors, and raise enough upon it to pass a regal night at the Trois Frères."
This proposition was received with great favor; the concierge gave Simp a hundred francs; he ordered cigars and a gallon of punch, and they repaired to his room to arrange the details of the celebration.
Freckle gave great offence by wishing that "Poor Lees" were alive to enjoy himself; and Simp said, "Bigad, sir! Freckle, living, is more of a bore than Lees, dead."
They resolved to attend supper in their dilapidated clothes, so that what they had been might be pleasantly rebuked by what they were. "And but for this feature," said Andy Plade, "it would have been well to invite Ambassador Slidell." But Pisgah and Simp, who had applied to Slidell several times by letter for temporary loans, were averse, just now, to the presence of one who had forgotten "the first requisite of a Southern Gentleman—generosity."
So it was settled that only the Colony and Hugenot were to come, each man to bring one lady. Simp, Pisgah, and Freckle thought Hugenot a villain. He had not even attended the obsequies of the lamented Lees. But Andy Plade forcibly urged that Hugenot was a good speaker, and would be needed for a sentiment.
In the evening a lunch was served by Mr. Simp, of which some young ladies of the Paris demi-monde partook; the "Bonnie Blue Flag" was sung with great spirit, and Freckle became so intoxicated at two in the morning that one of the young ladies was prevailed upon to see him to his hotel.
There was great joy in the Latin Quarter when it was known that the Southern Colony had won at Wisbaden, and meant to pay its debts. The tailors, shoemakers, tobacconists, publicans, grocers and hosiers met in squads upon corners to talk it over; all the gentlemen obtained loans, and, as evidence of how liberal they meant to be, commenced by giving away whatever old effects they had.
A cabinet or small saloon of the most expensive restaurant in Paris was pleasantly adorned for the first reunion of the Confederate exiles.
The ancient seven-starred flag, entwined with the new battle-flag, hung in festoons at the head of the room, and directly beneath was the portrait of President Davis. A crayon drawing of the C. S. N. V. Florida, from the portfolio of the amateur Mr. Simp, was arched by two crossed cutlasses, hired for the occasion; and upon an enormous iced cake, in the centre of the table, stood a barefooted soldier, with his back against a pine tree, defying both a Yankee and a negro.
At eleven o'clock P.M. the scrupulously dressed attendants heard a buzz and a hurried tramp upon the stairs. They repaired at once to their respective places, and after a pause the Southern Colony and convoy made their appearance upon the threshold. With the exception of Pisgah and Hugenot, all were clothed in the relics of their poverty, but their hairs were curled, and they wore some recovered articles of jewelry. They had thus the guise of a colony of barbers coming up from the gold diggings, full of nuggets and old clothes.
By previous arrangement, the chair was taken by Andy Plade, supported by two young ladies, and, after saying a welcome to the guests in elegant French, he made a significant gesture to the chief waiter. The most luscious Ostend oysters were at once introduced; they lifted them with bright silver fourchettes from plates of Sevres porcelain, and each guest touched his lips afterward with a glass of refined vermeuth. Three descriptions of soup came successively, an amber Julien, in which the microscope would have been baffled to detect one vegetable fibre, yet it bore all the flavors of the garden; a tureen of potage à la Bisque, in which the rarest and tiniest shell-fish had dissolved themselves; and at the last a tortue, small in quantity, but so delicious that murmurs of "encore" were made.
Morsels of viande, so alternated that the appetite was prolonged—each dish seeming a better variation of the preceding—were helped toward digestion by the finest vintages of Burgundy; and the luscious patés de foie gras—for which the plumpest geese in Bretagne had been invalids all their days, and, if gossip be true, submitted in the end to a slow roasting alive—introduced the fish, which, by the then reformed Parisian mode, must appear after, not before, the entrée.
A sole au vin blanc gave way to a regal mackerel au sauce champignon, and after this dish came confections and fruits ad libitum, ending with the removal of the cloth, the introduction of cigars, and a marquise or punch of pure champagne.
It was a pleasant evening within and without; the windows were raised, and they could see the people in the gardens strolling beneath the lime trees; the starlight falling on the plashing fountain and the gray, motionless statues; the pearly light of the lines of lamps, shining down the long arcades; the glitter of jewelry and precious merchandise in the marvellous boutiques; the groups which sat around the café beneath with sorbets and glacés, and sparkling wines; the old women in Normandie caps and green aprons, who flitted here and there to take the hire of chairs, and break the hum of couples, talking profane and sacred love; around and above all, the Cardinal's grand palace lifting its multitudinous pilasters, and seeming to prop up the sky.
It was Mr. Simp and his lady who saw these more particularly, as they had withdrawn from the table, to exchange a memory and a sentiment, and Hugenot had joined them with his most recent mistress; for the latter was particularly unfortunate in love, being cozened out of much money, and yet libelled for his closeness.
All the rest sat at the table, talking over the splendor of the supper, and proposing to hold a second one at the famous Philippe's, in the Rue Montorgueil. But Mr. Freckle, being again emboldened by wine, and affronted at the subordinate position assigned him, repeatedly cried that, for his part, he preferred the "old Latin Quarter," and challenged the chairman to produce a finer repast than Magny's in the Rue Counterscarp.
Pisgah, newly clothed cap-à-pie, was drinking absinthe, and with his absent eyes, worn face and changing hairs, looked like the spectre of his former self. Now and then he raised his head to give unconscious assent to something, but immediately relapsed to the worship of his nepenthe; and, as the long potations sent strong fumes to his temples, he chuckled audibly, and gathered his jaws to his eyes in a vacant grin. The gross, coarse woman at his side, from whom the other females shrank with frequent demonstrations of contempt, was Pisgah's blanchisseuse.
He was in her debt, and paid her with compliments; she is old and uninviting, and he owes her eight hundred francs. Hers are the new garments which he wears to-night. Few knew how many weary hours she labored for them in the floating houses upon the Seine. But she is in love with Pisgah, and is quite oblivious of the general regard; for, strange to such grand occasions, she has both eaten and imbibed enormously, and it may be even doubted at present whether she sees anything at all.
She