We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d'hote

with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup, then wait

a few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are

changed, and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas;

change again and take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer

grasshoppers); change and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry

pie and ice cream; then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc.;

finally coffee. Wine with every course, of course, being in France.

With such a cargo on board, digestion is a slow process, and we must sit

long in the cool chambers and smoke--and read French newspapers, which

have a strange fashion of telling a perfectly straight story till you get

to the "nub" of it, and then a word drops in that no man can translate,

and that story is ruined. An embankment fell on some Frenchmen

yesterday, and the papers are full of it today--but whether those

sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or only scared is more

than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give anything to know.

We were troubled a little at dinner today by the conduct of an American,

who talked very loudly and coarsely and laughed boisterously where all

others were so quiet and well behaved. He ordered wine with a royal

flourish and said:

"I never dine without wine, sir" (which was a pitiful falsehood), and

looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to

find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would as soon

expect to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine!--in a land

114

The Innocents Abroad