Bohemian Days Part 4

"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 pa.s.s a regal night at the _Trois Freres_."

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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 Amba.s.sador 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 cutla.s.ses, 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 gla.s.s 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 a la Bisque_, in which the rarest and tiniest sh.e.l.l-fish had dissolved themselves; and at the last a _tortue_, small in quant.i.ty, but so delicious that murmurs of "_encore_" were made.

Morsels of _viande_, so alternated that the appet.i.te was prolonged--each dish seeming a better variation of the preceding--were helped toward digestion by the finest vintages of Burgundy; and the luscious _pates 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 _entree_.

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 plas.h.i.+ng fountain and the gray, motionless statues; the pearly light of the lines of lamps, s.h.i.+ning down the long arcades; the glitter of jewelry and precious merchandise in the marvellous _boutiques_; the groups which sat around the cafe beneath with _sorbets_ and _glaces_, and sparkling wines; the old women in Normandie caps and green ap.r.o.ns, 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 mult.i.tudinous 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 a.s.signed 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-a-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 a.s.sent to something, but immediately relapsed to the wors.h.i.+p 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, coa.r.s.e 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 strokes his cloth coat with her red, swollen hands, and proposes now and then that he shall visit the wardrobe to look after his new hat; but Pisgah only pa.s.ses his arm about her, and drains his absinthe, and sometimes, as if to rea.s.sure the company, shouts wildly at the wrong places: "'At's so, boys!" "Hoorah for you!" "Ay! capital, gen'l'men, capital!" And his partner, conscious that something has happened, laughs to her waist, and leans forward, quite overcome, as if she beheld something mirthful over her washboard.

The place was now quite dreamy with tobacco-smoke; Freckle was riotously sick at the window, and Andy Plade, who had been borrowing small sums from everybody who would lend, struck the table with a corkscrew, and called for order.

"Drire rup!" cried Mr. Freckle, looking very attentively, but seeing nothing.

"I have the honor to state, gentlemen of the Colony, that we have with us to-night an eloquent representative of our country--one whose business energy and enterprise have been useful both to his own fortunes and to the South--one who is a friend of yours, and more than a dear friend to me. We came from the same old Palmetto State, the first and the last ditch of our revolution. I give you a toast, gentlemen, to which Mr. Hugenot will respond:

"'The Mother Country and the Colony--good luck to both!'"

"Hoorah for you!" cried Pisgah, looking the wrong way.

The gla.s.ses rattled an instant, amid iterations of "Hear! hear!" and Mr.

Hugenot, rising, as it appeared from a bandbox, carefully surveyed himself in a mirror opposite, and touched his nose with a small nosegay.

"I feel, my friends, rather as your host than your guest to-night--"

("It isn't yesternight"--from Freckle--"it's to-morroer night.")

"For I, gentlemen, stand upon my hereditary, if not my native heath; and you are, at most, Frenchmen by adoption. That ancestry whose deeds will live when the present poor representative of its name is departed drew from this martial land its blood and genius."

(Loud cries of "Gammon" from Freckle, and disapprobation from Simp.)

"From the past to the present, my friends, is a short transition. I found you in Paris a month ago, poor and dejected. You are here to-night, with that luxury which was your heritage. And how has it been restored?"

("'At's so!" earnestly, from Pisgah.)

"By hard, grovelling work? Never! No contact with vulgar clay has soiled these aristocratic hands. The cavalier cannot be a mudsill! You are not like the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin. You have not toiled, gentlemen, but you have spun!"

(Great awakening, doubt, and bewilderment.)

"You have spun the roulette ball, and you have won!"

(Ferocious and unparalleled cheering.)

"And it has occurred to me, my friends, that ou-ah cause, in the present tremendous struggle, has been well symbolized by these, its foreign representatives. Calamity came upon the South, as upon you. It had indebtedness, as you have had. Shall I say that you, like the South, repudiated? No! that is a slander of our adversaries. But the parallel holds good in that we found ourselves abandoned by the world. Nations abroad gave us no sympathy; our neighbors at home laughed at our affliction. They would wrest from us that bulwark of our liberties, the African."

"Capital, gentlemen, capital!" from Pisgah.

"They demanded that we should toil for ourselves. Did we do so? Never!

We appealed to the chances, as you have done; we would fight the Yankee, but we would not work. You would fight the bank, but you would not slave; and as you have won at Wisbaden, so have we, in a thousand glorious contests. Fill, then, gentlemen, to the toast which your chairman has announced:

"'The Mother Country and the Colony--good luck to both!'"

The applause which ensued was of such a nature that the proprietors below endeavored to hasten the conclusion of the dinner by sending up the bill. Pisgah and the _blanchisseuse_ were embracing in a spirited way, and Simp was holding back Freckle, who--persuaded that Hugenot's remarks were in some way derogatory to himself--wished to toss down his gauntlet.

"The next toast, gentlemen of the Colony," said Andy Plade, "is to be dispatched immediately by the waiter, whom you see upon my right hand, to the office of the telegraph; thence to Mr. Risque at Wisbaden:

"'The Southern exiles; doubtless the most immethodical men alive; but the results prove they have the best system: no _Risque_, no winnings.'

"You will see, gentlemen," continued Mr. Plade, when the enthusiasm had subsided, "that I place the toast in this envelope. It will go in two minutes to Mr. Auburn Risque!"

The waiter started for the door; it was dashed open in his face, and splattered, dirty, and travel-worn, Auburn Risque himself stood like an apparition on the threshold.

"Perdition!" thundered Plade, staggered and pale-faced; "you were not to break the bank till to-morrow."