A Versailles Christmas-Tide | Page 4

picturesque to our town ideas in the heap of logs that Karl carried up in a great panier and piled at the side of the hearth. Even the little faggots of kindling wood, willow-knotted and with the dry copper-tinted leaves still clinging to the twigs, had a rustic charm.
These were pleasant moments when, ascending from the chill outer air, we found our chamber aglow with ruddy firelight that glinted in the mirrors and sparkled on the shining surface of the polished floor; when we drew our chairs up to the hearth, and, scorning the electric light, revelled in the beauty of the leaping and darting flames.
It was only in the salle-à-manger that we saw the other occupants of the hotel; and when we learned that several of them had lived en pension under the roof of the assiduous proprietor for periods varying from five to seven years, we felt ephemeral, mere creatures of a moment, and wholly unworthy of regard.
[Illustration: Ursa Major]
At eight o'clock Karl brought the petit déje?ner of coffee and rolls to our room. At eleven, our morning visit to the school hospital over, we breakfasted in the salle-à-manger, a large bright room, one or other of whose many south windows had almost daily, even in the depth of winter, to be shaded against the rays of the sun. Three chandeliers of glittering crystal starred with electric lights depended from the ceiling. Half a dozen small tables stood down each side; four larger ones occupied the centre of the floor, and were reserved for transient custom.
The first thing that struck us as peculiar was that every table save ours was laid for a single person, with a half bottle of wine, red or white, placed ready, in accordance with the known preference of the expected guest. We soon gathered that several of the regular customers lodged outside and, according to the French fashion, visited the hotel for meals only. After the early days of keen anxiety regarding our invalid had passed, we began to study our fellow guests individually and to note their idiosyncrasies. Sitting at our allotted table during the progress of the leisurely meals, we used to watch as one habitué after another entered, and, hanging coat and hat upon certain pegs, sat silently down in his accustomed place, with an unvarying air of calm deliberation.
Then Iorson, the swift-footed gar?on, would skim over the polished boards to the newcomer, and, tendering the menu, would wait, pencil in hand, until the guest, after careful contemplation, selected his five plats from its comprehensive list.
[Illustration: Meal Considerations]
The most picturesque man of the company had white moustaches of surprising length. On cold days he appeared enveloped in a fur coat, a garment of shaggy brown which, in conjunction with his hirsute countenance, made his aspect suggest the hero in pantomime renderings of "Beauty and the Beast." But in our hotel there was no Beauty, unless indeed it were Yvette, and Yvette could hardly be termed beautiful.
Yvette also lived outside. She did not come to déje?ner, but every night precisely at a quarter-past seven the farther door would open, and Yvette, her face expressing disgust with the world and all the things thereof, would enter.
Yvette was blonde, with neat little features, a pale complexion, and tiny hands that were always ringless. She rang the changes on half a dozen handsome cloaks of different degrees of warmth. To an intelligent observer their wear might have served as a thermometer. Yvette was blasée, and her millinery was in sympathy with her feelings. Her hats had all a fringe of disconsolate feathers, whose melancholy plumage emphasised the downward curve of her mouth. To see Yvette enter from the darkness and, seating herself at her solitary table, droop over her plate as though there were nothing in Versailles worth sitting upright for, was to view ennui personified.
Yvette invariably drank white wine, and the food rarely pleased her. She would cast a contemptuous look over the menu offered by the deferential Henri, then turn wearily away, esteeming that no item on its length merited even her most perfunctory consideration. But after one or two despondent glances, Yvette ever made the best of a bad bargain, and ordered quite a comprehensive little dinner, which she ate with the same air of utter disdain. She always concluded by eating an orange dipped in sugar. Even had a special table not been reserved for her, one could have told where Yvette had dined by the bowl of powdered sugar, just as one could have located the man with the fierce moustaches and the fur coat by the presence of his pepper-mill, or the place of "Madame" from her prodigal habit of rending a quarter-yard of the crusty French bread in twain and consuming only the soft inside.
From the ignorance