“Judging from the specimens of female loveliness I have met with so far, I should say very remarkable,” retorted Sampson; “for, with the exception of that pretty chambermaid at the Pavillong dong Haw, I haven’t seen a decent-looking woman since we left Saint Mallow.”
They went down to the bridge, Sampson hobbling over the stony pathway, and vehemently abusing the vestry and local board of Auray, which settlement he appeared to think was governed exactly after the manner of our English country towns.
They crossed the bridge and went to look at an old church on the other side of the river, where the fisher folk had hung models of three-masters and screw steamers as votary offerings to their guardian saints; then they re-crossed the bridge and went up to an observatory on a hill above the little town, and surveyed as much as they could see of the landscape in the gathering winter gloom; and then Mr. Sampson, who might possibly have been impressed by Vesuvius in a state of eruption, but who had not a keen eye for the quaint and picturesque on a small scale, proposed that they should go back to their hotel and make themselves comfortable for dinner.
“I should like a wash if there’s such a thing as a cake of soap in the place,” said the lawyer, “but from the appearance of the inhabitants I should rather suspect there wasn’t. Soap would be a mockery for some of them. Nothing less than scraping would be any real benefit.”
They found their sitting-room at the hotel bright with wax candles and a wood fire. Mr. Sampson nearly came to grief upon the beeswaxed floor, and protested against polished floors as a remnant of barbarism. Otherwise he found things more civilised than he had expected, never before having trusted himself across the Channel, and being strictly insular in his conception of foreign manners and customs.
“I should hope the old gentleman who is to dine with us can speak English,” he said; “he ought at his time of life.”
“But if he has lived all his life at Auray?”
“Well, no doubt this is a sink of ignorance,” asserted Sampson. “I dare say the stupid old man won’t be able to understand a word I say.”
The two priests were announced as the great clock in the marketplace struck six, town time, while the clock on the mantelpiece followed with its shriller chime. “Father le Mescam, Father Gedain,” said the pretty chambermaid in most respectful tones, and thereupon the two gentlemen entered, neatly dressed, clean shaven, smiling, and having nothing of that dark and sinister air which Tom Sampson expected to discover in every Popish priest.
Father le Mescam was a little old man, with a quaint, comical face, which would have done admirably for the first gravedigger in Hamlet; small twinkling eyes, full of sly humour; a mobile mouth, and a pert little nose, cocked up in the air, as if in good-humoured contempt at the folly of human nature in general.
“I am extremely obliged to you for the kindness of this visit, Father le Mescam,” said John Treverton, when the Vicaire had presented him to his superior.
“My dear sir, when a pleasant-mannered traveller asks me to dinner, I am only too glad to accept the invitation,” answered the priest, heartily. “A whiff of air from the outside world gives an agreeable flavour to life in this quiet little corner of the universe.”
“Lord have mercy on us, how fast the old chap talks!” exclaimed Sampson, inwardly. “Thank goodness we Englishmen never gabble like that.”
And then, determined not to be left altogether out of the conversation, Mr. Sampson pulled himself together for a bold attempt. He gazed benignantly at Father le Mescam, and shouted at the top of his voice—
“Fraw, Mossoo, horriblemong fraw.”
The little priest smiled blandly, but shrugged his shoulders with seriocomic helplessness.
“Non moing c’est saisonable temps pour le temp de l’ong,” pursued Sampson, waxing bolder, and feeling as if all the French he had acquired in his school days was pouring in upon him like a flood of light.
Father le Mescam still looked dubious.
“Well,” exclaimed Sampson, turning to John Treverton, “I’ve always heard that Frenchmen were slow at learning foreign languages; but I could not have believed they’d be so disgustingly stupid as not to understand their own. Upon my word, Treverton, I don’t see any reason why you should explode in that fashion,” he remonstrated, as Treverton fell back in his chair in a fit of irrepressible laughter. “Allong,” cried Sampson. “Voyci le pottage; and I’m blessed if they haven’t emptied the bread basket into it!” he exclaimed, contemplating with ineffable disgust the contents of the soup tureen, in which he beheld lumps of bread floating on the surface of a thin broth. “Venez dong, Treverton, si vous avez finni de faire un sot de voter meme, nous pouvons aussi bien commencer.”
“Mais, oui, monsieur,” cried the curé, enchanted at understanding about two words of this last speech, and beaming at the Englishman in a paroxysm of good nature. “Oui, oui, oui, monsieur, commençons, commençons. C’est très bien dit.”
“Ah,” grunted Sampson, “the old idiot is inspired when one talks about his dinner. If that bread and waterish broth is a specimen of the kewsine of this hotel, I don’t think much of it,” he added.
Poor as the soup was in appearance, Mr. Sampson found it was not amiss in flavour, and when a savoury preparation of some unknown fish had followed the soup tureen, and a fricassee of fowl and mushroom had replaced the fish, he began to feel at peace with the Pavillon d’en haut. A leg of mutton from the salt marshes completed his reconciliation to provincial cookery, and a dish of vanilla cream à
