Part 47 (1/2)

It was a large, old-fas.h.i.+oned, Louis Quatorze piece of furniture, the top of which, formed from a single slab of some kind of gray and yellow marble, was stained all over with the coffee, wine, and ink-splashes of many generations of customers. It looked as old--nay, older--than the house itself.

The young men who were playing at dominoes looked up and nodded, as three or four others had done in the outer room when we pa.s.sed through.

”_Bonjour, l'ami_,” said the one who seemed to be winning. ”Hast thou chanced to see anything of Martial, coming along!”

”I observed a nose defiling round the corner of the Rue de Bussy,”

replied Muller, ”and it looked as if Martial might be somewhere in the far distance, but I didn't wait to see. Are you expecting him?”

”Confound him--yes! We've been waiting more than half an hour.”

”If you have invited him to breakfast,” said Muller, ”he is sure to come.”

”On the contrary, he has invited us to breakfast.”

”Ah, that alters the case,” said Muller, philosophically. ”Then he is sure _not_ to come.” ”Garcon!”

A bullet-headed, short-jacketed, long-ap.r.o.ned waiter, who looked as if he had not been to bed since his early youth, answered the summons,

”M'sieur!”

”What have you that you can especially recommend this morning?”

The waiter, with that nasal volubility peculiar to his race, rapidly ran over the whole vegetable and animal creation.

Muller listened with polite incredulity.

”Nothing else?” said he, when the other stopped, apparently from want of breath.

”_Mais oui, M'sieur_!” and, thus stimulated, the waiter, having ”exhausted worlds and then imagined new,” launched forth into a second and still more impossible catalogue.

Muller turned to me.

”The resources of this establishment, you observe,” he said, very gravely, ”are inexhaustible. One might have a Roc's egg a la Sindbad for the asking.”

The waiter looked puzzled, shuffled his slippered feet, and murmured something about ”_oeufs sur le plat_.”

”Unfortunately, however,” continued Muller, ”we are but men--not fortresses provisioning for a siege. Antoine, _mon enfant_, we know thee to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent; but we will be content with a _vol-au-vent_ of fish, a _bifteck aux pommes frites_, an _omelette sucree_, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux with the yellow seal. Now vanis.h.!.+”

The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished accordingly.

Meanwhile more students had come in, and more kept coming. Hats and caps cropped up rapidly wherever there were pegs to hang them on, and the talking became fast and furious.

I soon found that everybody knew everybody at the Cafe Procope, and that the specialty of the establishment was dominoes--just as the specialty of the Cafe de la Regence is chess. There were games going on before long at almost every table, and groups of lookers-on gathered about those who enjoyed the reputation of being skilful players.

Gradually breakfast after breakfast emerged from some mysterious nether world known only to the waiters, and the war of dominoes languished.

”These are all students, of course,” I said presently, ”and yet, though I meet a couple of hundred fellows at our hospital lectures, I don't see a face I know.”

”You would find some by this time, I dare say, in the other room,”

replied Muller. ”I brought you in here that you might sit at Voltaire's table, and eat your steak under the shadow of Voltaire's bust; but this salon is chiefly frequented by law-students--the other by medical and art students. Your place, _mon cher_, as well as mine, is in the outer sanctuary.”