s XI permit any of his court to have apartments. A scutcheon,
bearing the fleur de lys, hung over the principal door of the large
irregular building; but there was about the yard and the offices
little or none of the bustle which in those days, when attendants were
maintained both in public and in private houses, marked that business
was alive, and custom plenty. It seemed as if the stern and unsocial
character of the royal mansion in the neighbourhood had communicated
a portion of its solemn and terrific gloom even to a place designed
according to universal custom elsewhere, for the temple of social
indulgence, merry society, and good cheer.

Maitre Pierre, without calling any one, and even without approaching
the principal entrance, lifted the latch of a side door, and led the
way into a large room, where a faggot was blazing on the hearth, and
arrangements made for a substantial breakfast.

"My gossip has been careful," said the Frenchman to the Scot. "You must
be cold, and I have commanded a fire; you must be hungry, and you shall
have breakfast presently."

He whistled and the landlord entered--answered Maitre Pierre's bon
jour with a reverence--but in no respect showed any part of the prating
humour properly belonging to a French publican of all ages.

"I expected a gentleman," said Maitre Pierre, "to order breakfast--hath
he done so?"

In answer the landlord only bowed; and while he continued to bring,
and arrange upon the table, the various articles of a comfortable meal,
omitted to extol their merits by a single word. And yet the breakfast
merited such eulogiums as French hosts are wont to confer upon their
regales, as the reader will be informed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV: THE DEJEUNER

Sacred heaven! what masticators! what bread!

YORICK'S TRAVELS

We left our young stranger in France situated more comfortably than he
had found himself since entering the territories of the ancient Gauls.
The breakfast, as we hinted in the conclusion of the last chapter, was
admirable. There was a pate de Perigord, over which a gastronome would
have wished to live and die, like Homer's lotus eaters [see the Odyssey,
chap. ix, where Odysseus arrives at the land of the Lotus eaters:
"whosoever of them ate the lotus's honeyed fruit resolved to bring
tidings back no more and never to leave the place, but with the Lotus
eaters there desired to stay, to feed on lotus and forget his going
home." Palme