e,
who presented him with an order on the intendant for the wages due to
him, and without a word waved his hand towards the door. Remonstrance
and entreaty, or the assurance that it was a first fault, were alike in
vain; a stare, a shrug, and just possibly the pithy injunction, "Go!"
was the utmost they ever elicited from the _maitre d'hotel_; and as
their wages were high and always paid to the day, a practice by no
means common in great households in those times, the cases of
delinquency were few, and M. Boulederouloue's staff, like himself, did
their duty to perfection.

And Monsieur Perigord, the _chef_? Well, if Monsieur Boulederouloue
weighed twice as much as M. Jasmin, the latter certainly weighed twice
as much as Monsieur Perigord. Diminutive and meagre to a degree, the
master of the kitchen possessed a mighty soul, and was endowed with an
energy of purpose that must have made him first and foremost in any
sphere of life; but fate had ordained that he should only be the first
and foremost cook in all the world, though as Beaujardin, and not
Versailles, was the scene of his operations, it is only in these humble
pages that his name will go down to posterity. Such was his restless
vivacity, that in his ever ready denunciations of anything poor and
mean, or cowardly, his shrivelled frame would quiver like a marionette
on wires; he would rend in shreds his laced frill and ruffles,
scattering thorn like snowflakes on the floor, and end by flinging
after them his small pig-tailed queue, leaving all bare and bald a head
that for colour and size might have been mistaken for an ostrich egg,
but for the hawk-like beak and small fiery black eyes, that would have
been ridiculous in any face but that of Monsieur Perigord.

That Monsieur Jasmin should look down with sovereign contempt on two
such men--on the _maitre d'hotel_ for his entire absence of all
sensitiveness, and on the _chef de cuisine_ for his unpolished excess
of it was only natural. Yet it must not be supposed that with either
of them he indulged that air of supercilious patronage with which he
was accustomed to treat all not absolutely above him in the social
scale; it would have been simply thrown away upon the one, the other
would have kicked him for it, even if he had to get upon a chair to do
so. Still Monsieur Jasmin managed to maintain some kind of mysterious
superiority over both, and, on the present occasion, he took care to
let them know that he