Punch, or The London Charivari | Page 2

getting on in the world by "boo'ing and boo'ing."
We pass through a courtyard, reminding me of the kind of courtyard still to be seen in some of our old London City houses-of-business. This, however, is modernised with whitewash. Here also, it being a Continental court-yard, are the inevitable orange-trees in huge green tubs placed at the four corners. A few pigeons feeding, a blinking cat curled up on a mat, pretending to take no sort of interest in the birds, and a little child playing with a cart. Such is this picture. Externally, not much like a house of business; but it is, and of big business too. We enter a cool and tastefully furnished apartment. Here M. VESQUIER receives us cordially. He has a military bearing, suggesting the idea of a Colonel en retraite. I am preparing compliments and interrogatories in French, when he says, in good plain English, with scarcely an accent--
"Now DAUBINET has brought you here, we must show you the calves, and then back to breakfast. Will that suit you?"
"Perfectly." I think to myself--why "calves"? It sounded like "calves," only without the "S." Must ask presently.
M. VESQUIER begs to be excused for a minute; he will return directly. I look to DAUBINET for an explanation. "We are, then, going to see a farm, I presume?" I say to him. "Farm!" exclaims DAUBINET, surprised. "_Que voulez-vous dire, mon cher?_"--"Well, didn't Mister--Mister--" "VESQUIER," suggests DAUBINET.
"Yes, Mister VESQUIER--didn't he say we were to go and 'see the calves'?--_C'est à dire_," I translate, in despair at DAUBINET's utterly puzzled look, "_que nous irons avec lui à la ferme pour voir les veaux_--the calves."--"Ha! ha! ha!" Off goes DAUBINET into a roar. Evidently I've made some extraordinary mistake. It flashes across me suddenly. Owing to M. VESQUIER's speaking such excellent English, it never occurred to me that he had suddenly interpolated the French word "_caves_" as an anglicised French word into his speech to me. This accounts for his suppression of the final consonant.
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"Ah!" I exclaim, suddenly enlightened; "I see--the cellars."
"_Pou ni my?_" cries DAUBINET, still in ecstasies, and speaking Russian or modern Greek. "_Da!_--of course--_c'est ?a--nous allons voir les caves_--the cellars--where all the champagne is. _Karrascho!_"
At this moment M. VESQUIER returns. He will just take us through the offices to his private rooms. Clerks at work everywhere. Uncommonly like an English place of business: not much outward difference between French clerks in a large house like this and English ones in one of our great City houses; only this isn't the City, but is, so to speak, more Manchesterian or Liverpoolian, with the immense advantage of being remarkably clean, curiously quiet, and in a pure and fresh atmosphere. I don't clearly understand what M. VESQUIER's business is, but as he seems to take for granted that I know all about it, I trust to getting DAUBINET alone and obtaining definite information from him. Are they VESQUIER's caves we are going to see? "No," DAUBINET tells me presently, quite surprised, at my ignorance; "we are going to see _les caves de Popperie_--Popp & Co., only Co.'s out of it, and it's all POPP now."
"Now then, Gentlemen," says the _gérant_ of POPP & Co, "here's a voiture. We have twenty minutes' drive." The Popp-Manager points out to me all the interesting features of the country. DAUBINET amuses himself by sitting on the box and talking to the coachman.
"It excites me," he explains, when requested to take a back seat inside--though, by the way, it is in no sense DAUBINET's _métier_ to "take a back seat,"--"it excites me--it amuses me to talk to a _cocher. On ne peut pas causer avec un vrai cocher tous les jours._" And presently we see them gesticulating to each other and talking both at once, DAUBINET, of course, is speaking English and various other languages, but as little French as possible, to the evident bewilderment of the driver. DAUBINET is perfectly happy. "Petzikoff! Blass the Prince of WAILES!" I hear him bursting out occasionally. Whereat the coachman smiles knowingly, and flicks the horses.
* * * * *
THE TWO WINDS.
(_A FAIRY STORY FOR THE SEASON OF 1891. IMITATED--AT A DISTANCE--FROM HANS ANDERSEN'S CELEBRATED TALE OF "THE FOUR WINDS."_)
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* * * * *
The Mother of the Winds (acting as locum tenens for her Clerk of the Weather, who, sick of his own unseasonable work, was off to spend his annual holiday with Mr. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON in the Pacific Isles), received the desperately damp, dishevelled, blown-about, and almost heart-broken Princess AGRICULTURA at the door of the Cave.
"Oh, here you are again!" she cried, "once more in the Cavern of the Winds! And this time you have brought two of my sons with you, I see," she added, pointing to the South Wind and the West Wind, who were blowing