Louis Quatorze fashion. An enormous
full-bottomed wig of the same period surmounted and flanked his full
moon face of pasty whiteness, most like the battered and colourless
visage of an old wax doll, in which a transverse slit does duty for a
mouth, and whose deficiency in the article of nose is counterbalanced
by great glassy eyes guiltless of a single atom of expression.
Marvellous indeed was Monsieur Boulederouloue's stolidity in all
things, and not less notable his stupidity in all but one; that one
thing, however, was his business as _maitre d'hotel_, in which he was
unsurpassed, unrivalled. If you told him that there had been no kings
of France before Louis the Fourteenth, and that his native country was
an island in the Pacific, that grass grew on trees in India, and that
the stars were old moons chopped up into bits, he would have stared at
you and believed it all. What did he know of such things? His father
and grandfather had been stewards in the Beaujardin family before he
was born; from his infancy he had seen, noted, watched, talked of,
cared for only what pertained to the proper regulation of the household
that constituted his little world. So he grew up, and on the day on
which his father, old Mathieu Boulederouloue, departed this life, young
Mathieu put on the Louis Quatorze suit and wig, and not one of the
guests at the chateau could have imagined that the one functionary in
the place most important to him had bequeathed to new and untried hands
the post that he had filled for forty years. What of it? From that
day it was with young Mathieu as it had been with old Mathieu. One
glance into the brilliant saloon told him how many covers were required
for supper, what wines, what viands, suited the occasion. One stately
walk round the furnished table was enough for him to detect the
minutest error or omission of his myrmidons. Not one of the hundreds
of guests that visited the chateau crossed the great hall to whom the
_maitre d'hotel_ was unable to assign on the spot the chamber he was to
occupy, his place at table, and the degree of precedence to which he
was entitled. Yes, M. Boulederouloue was assuredly a perfect master of
his business; and what is more, the scores of servants under him were
all masters of theirs, for he had a most simple and summary mode of
dealing with any one that was not perfectly in order. The offending
party was at once summoned to the presence of Monsieur Boulederoulou