The Commercial Gentlemen of St. Just
At the Cheval Blanc the landlady gave us a room over the stable on the farther side of a large court-yard.
From the window we looked down into the court on chickens and ducks, and on a woman watering a small vegetable garden, and the poultry and vegetables reminded us that we had not dined. So we went to the café of the hotel, where Madame stayed our hunger with the overgrown lady fingers that are served with dessert at every well-regulated table d’hôte, and where a small man in a frock-coat and Derby hat, with a very loud voice, exchanged political opinions with a large man in a blue blouse with no voice to speak of; while a third, in white blouse and overalls, stood and listened in neutral silence.
The discussion was at its liveliest when the dinner-bell rang, and we hurried off in such indecent haste that we were the first to arrive in the dining-room. We knew as soon as we saw the pots of mignonette and geranium and the well-trimmed, well-shaded lamps on the table, that whoever had placed them there must have prepared dishes worthy to be served by their sweet scent and soft light, and we were not disappointed.—I have seldom eaten a better dinner. We were ten altogether at table. Seven men were guests like ourselves. One was an unwearying sportsman of France. The six others we soon discovered to be commercial gentlemen, though what so many travellers could find to do in one such small place was a mystery we do not pretend to solve. Madame, the landlady, was the tenth in the company. She presided in person, not at the head, but at the centre of one side of the table. We sat directly opposite, encompassed about with drummers and touters.——
“Monsieur and Madame arrived from Amiens on a velocipede,” said the landlady, opening the conversation and the soup-tureen at the same moment.
—The sportsman started to speak, hesitated, coughed, and fell to feeding his dogs with bread. The commercial gentlemen wanted to know at what hotel we stopped in Amiens.
At this moment a diversion was made by the entrance of a stout man with the smile of a clown and the short forked beard of a Mephistopheles, who took his place on Madame’s right.——
“Mon Dieu, Madame,” said he, as a plate of soup was put in front of him and the tureen carried away, “I came next to you because I love you; and you would starve me? You would give me no more soup!”
“But you are greedy,” said Madame.
—The soup, however, was left on a side table.——
“I have been starved already to-day,” he went on, before we had time to answer the question put to us. “I slept last night at a grand hôtel. It was so grand that this morning for breakfast they could give me but cutlets of mutton and cutlets of pork and ham—and ham, one knows it well, it counts for nothing. Is this not true, Madame?”
—He had had a wide and remarkable experience of hotels. He knew one. Ma foi! they swept it every day. But he knew another. Dame! there the floors were waxed and rubbed daily, so that if a beefsteak were to fall on them it would be as clean as if it fell upon a plate. For his part, however, he thought no hotel would be perfect until it made a law to give each guest a partridge and half a bottle of wine with his candle, in case of hunger during the night.
A little man with a light moustache, on Madame’s left, as he amiably filled her glass with wine and seltzer, recalled a certain town where the hotels were closed at ten. He arrived at midnight; every door was shut. What did he do? He could not sleep in the street. He went to the Mairie.
The man next to J—— had heard of a hotel where if you stayed out after ten they would not permit you to enter even if they had your baggage. The proprietor would come to a window above when you knocked, and throw your trunks down rather than open the door. He then made no charge.——
“Ma foi!” thought Mephistopheles, who could no more have begun a sentence without an ejaculation than he could have eaten his dinner without wine, “he would take the pavé and throw it at the head of such a proprietor.”
—Then they turned to hear our experience. They appealed to J——.
“O, nous,” he began bravely, “nous avons été en France pour deux jours seulement”—then suddenly to me, “Oh, bother, you tell the fellow what he wants, and ask them if they know any decent hotels on the route,” and he took out our route-form.
—I explained our intention to ride through France into Italy, and asked if they would have the goodness to recommend hotels by the way.
We could not have paid them a greater compliment. The next minute the route-form was passed from one to the other, and by the name of each town was written the name of a commercial hotel which meant a good dinner and a moderate bill. But not one of the houses in the C. T. C. Handbook was on the list.—Mr. Howells, in his Italian Journeys, declares it to be the evident intention of a French drummer, “not only to keep all his own advantages, but to steal some of yours upon the first occasion.” I wish he could have seen these men at St. Just, as each helped his neighbour to wine before filling his own glass. A commercial gentleman apparently would not think of not sharing his bottle with some one, or of not calling for another when his first was empty, in obedience to the sign seen in so many hotels, “Vin à discrétion.” It must be admitted that this is only what an Englishman would call “good form” in commercial circles, since one bottle always stands between two covers. But then, when did “good form” ever serve such practical ends in England?
We saw nothing of the French travellers’ ill-breeding of which Mr. Howells so bitterly complains. If they talked, well, is it not their business to talk? Besides, they never once referred to trade or praised their wares. I know men of far higher professions who cannot boast of a like discretion. Indeed, is it not a common thing for great men to give dinners for the express purpose of talking “shop”?—It is true Mephistopheles, when he wanted to call Madame’s attention, beat on the table with his knife-handle and shouted in a voice of thunder——
“Madame! Madame Emilie! Emilie! Bon Dieu! gentlemen, she will not listen!”
—But if she took this in perfect good nature it was not for us to object. That she did not find fault was clear. While we were eating mutton I noticed he was served with a special dish of birds.
The excellence of the dinner and the good-humour of the company came to a climax with the course of beans. Mephistopheles asserted enthusiastically that had they not been invented already he would have invented them himself. Monsieur on Madame’s left wondered who brought them into France. Somebody suggested the Bishop of Soissons. As they all laughed this must have been a joke, but we could not understand it; and though I have since spent hours over it in the British Museum, I still fail to see the point.—The traveller next to J—— said nothing, but was twice helped to the favourite dish.
Afterwards in the café Madame introduced us to an Englishman who had lived thirty years in St. Just, and who was always glad to see his countrymen. We explained we were Americans, but he assured us it was an equal pleasure—he always liked to speak the English.—Whatever else St. Just had done for him, it had made him forget his mother tongue.—He was much pleased with our tandem, which he had examined while we were at dinner. He rode a bicycle, and was therefore competent to judge its merits. He also thought ours a fine journey when we showed him our route on the map.
In the meantime, the commercial gentlemen had settled down to coffee and the papers, and the evening promised to be peaceful. But presently the little man with the light moustache, who had sat on Madame’s left, put his paper down to comment on the advantages of naturalisation, on which subject he had just been reading an editorial. It was a great thing for the country, he thought, that the children of foreigners should be permitted to become Frenchmen.
But Mephistopheles was down upon him in an instant. He would not hear of naturalisation.——
“Mon Dieu! I am a Frenchman. I go to America or Austria. A son is born to me there. Is he an American or an Austrian? No, Monsieur, he is a Frenchman!” and he glared defiance.
—But the little man reasoned that, on the other hand, France was too hospitable not to take in strangers.
Mephistopheles swore it was not logical, and, what was more, it was against la morale, and la morale was prime. This was his clinching argument.
The dispute grew warm. They both left their coffee and walked up and down the room with great angry strides, beat themselves on their breasts, threw their arms to right and left; one would have thought blows were imminent. In passing, they stopped simultaneously before the sportsman, who sat near me.——
“And you, sir, what do you say?”
“My faith, gentlemen, I say you are both too violent.”
—Thus startled into speech, he turned to me to explain his views.——
“A man wishes to adopt France. Et bien? it is reasonable that France should adopt him.”
—When I looked around again the argument had been amicably adjusted over a backgammon board.