Lippincotts Magazine, October 1873 | Page 6

your mouth; number three--"
"H'm!" said the professor doubtfully, "those are singular instructions,
scratching the nose and sucking the thumb. It strikes me they have been
teaching you nursery signals rather than Masonry signals."
[Illustration: BEER-GARDEN OF THE DAUPHIN.]
"My good friend," said the Scot with extreme politeness, yet not
without dignity, "you cannot understand it, because you were not
present. I received a Light which burned my eyelashes. The sage
always examines a mystery before he decides upon it. My Masonic
friend will be here at breakfast to-day: he promised me. Only wait for
him. He can explain these things better than I, you will see. The little
experiments with our noses and thumbs, you understand, are
symbols--Thummim and Urim, or something of that kind."
"Or else nonsense. You have been quizzed, I fear."
The North Briton bridled his head, knitted his brows and pushed back
his chair; then, after a moment of pregnant and stormy silence, he
turned suddenly around to me, who was enjoying the comedy--"Hand
me the cheese."
To be taken for a waiter amused me. Never in the world would a
domestic have dared to present himself in a hotel habited as I was. I
was in the same clothes with which I had left Passy the morning
previous: my coat was peppered with dust, my linen bruised and dingy,
my tie was nodding doubtfully over my right shoulder. A waiter in my
condition would have been kicked out without arrears of wages.
The professor, looking quickly around, recognized me with a ludicrous
endeavor to relapse into the fiery and outraged patriot. He expended his
temper on the red nose. "Take care whom you speak to," he cried in a
high, portly voice, and pointing to my japanned box, which I had slung
upon a curtain-hook. "Monsieur is not an attaché of the house.
Monsieur is doubtless an herb-doctor."
[Illustration: SUCKLED IN A CREED OUTWORN.]
There are charlatans who pervade the provincial parts of France,
stopping a month at a time in the taverns, and curing the ignorant with
samples according to the old system of _simulacra_--prescribing
kepatica for liver, lentils for the eyes and green walnuts for vapors, on
account of their supposed correspondence to the different organs. I
settled my cravat at the mirror to contradict my resemblance to a waiter,

threw my box into a wine-cooler to dispose of my identity with the
equally uncongenial herbalist, and took a seat. Nodding paternally to
the coat of Prussian blue, I proceeded to order Bordeaux-Léoville,
capon with Tarragon sauce, compôte of nectarines in Madeira jelly--all
superfluous, for I was brutally hungry, and wanted chops and coffee;
but what will not an unsupported candidate for respectability do when
he desires to assert his caste? I was proceeding to ruin myself in
playing the eccentric millionaire when the door opened, giving entrance
to a group of breakfasters.
"There he is--that's the man!" said the homoeopathist, much excited,
and indicating to the blue coat a brisk, capable-looking gentleman of
thirty-two in a neat silver-gray overcoat. The latter, after slightly
touching his nose, nodded to the Scotchman, who in return drew
himself up to his full height and formally wiped his mouth with a
napkin, as if preparing himself for an ovation. Happily, he contented
himself with rubbing his own nose with each hand in turn, and bowing
so profoundly that he appeared ready to break at the knees.
"_Kellner_!" said the silver-gray, making a grand rattle among the
plates and glasses, "some wine! some water! some ink! an omelette! a
writing-pad! a _filet à la Chabrillant_!"
The last-named dish is one which Sciolists are perpetually calling _filet
à la Chateaubriand_, saddling the poetic defender of Christianity with
an invention in cookery of which he was never capable. I approved the
new-comer, who was writing half a dozen notes with his mouth full, for
his nicety in nomenclature: to get the right term, even in kitchen affairs,
shows a reflective mind and tenderness of conscience. My friend the
engineer arrived, and placed himself in the chair I had turned up beside
my own. I was ashamed of the rate at which I advanced through my
capon, but I recollected that Anne Boleyn, when she was a maid of
honor, used to breakfast off a gallon of ale and a chine of beef.
My canal-maker interrupted me with a sudden appeal. "Listen--listen
yonder," he said, jogging my knee, "it is very amusing. He is in a high
vein to-day."
The gray coat, who had already directed four or five letters, and was
cleaning his middle finger with a lemon over the glass bowl, had just
opened a lofty geographical discussion with the bluebottle. I cannot
express how eagerly I, as a theorist of some pretension in Comparative

Geography, awoke to a