out, a
certain air of preparation--not such as by bustle can interfere with the
placid enjoyment you feel, but something which denotes care and skill.
Tou feel, in fact, that impatience on your part would only militate
against your own interest, and that when the moment arrives for serving,
the potage has then received the last finishing touch of the artist. By
this time the company are assembled; the majority are men, but there
are four or five ladies. They are _en chapeau_ too; but it is a toilette
that shows taste and elegance, and the freshness--that delightful
characteristic of foreign dress--of their light muslin dresses is in
keeping with all about. Then follows that little pleasant bustle of
meeting; the interchange of a number of small courtesies, which cost
little but are very delightful; the news of the theatre for the night;
some soiree, well known, or some promenade, forms the whole--and we are
at table.

The destiny that made me a traveller has blessed me with either the
contentment of the most simple or the perfect enjoyment of the most
cultivated cuisine; and if I have eaten _tripe de rocher_ with Parry at
the Pole, I have never lost thereby the acme of my relish for truffles
at the 'Freres.' Therefore, trust me that in my mention of a table
d'hote I have not forgotten the most essential of its features--for
this, the smallness and consequent selectness of the party is always a
guarantee.

Thus, then, you are at table; your napkin is spread, but you see no
soup. The reason is at once evident, and you accept with gratefulness
the little plate of Ostend oysters, each somewhat smaller than a
five-franc piece, that are before you. Who would seek for pearls without
when such treasures are to be found within the shell--cool and juicy and
succulent; suggestive of delights to come, and so suited to the limpid
glass of Chablis. What preparatives for the potage, which already I
perceive to be a _printaniere_.

But why dwell on all this? These memoranda of mine were intended
rather to form a humble companion to some of John Murray's inestimable
treatises on the road; some stray recollection of what in my rambles
had struck me as worth mention; something that might serve to lighten
a half-hour here or an evening there; some hint for the wanderer of
a hotel or a church or a view or an actor or a poet, a picture or
a _pate_, for which his halting-place is remarkable, but of whose
existence he knew not. And to come