“I went towards the exercising ground, where
we were all to meet, when I was dumfounded at the
sight of a gigantic negro dressed in white duck and
wearing a straw hat. It was Timbuctoo. He
was beaming and was walking with his hands in his
pockets in front of a little shop where two plates
and two glasses were displayed.
“‘What are you doing?’ I said.
“’Me not go. Me good cook; me make
food for Colonel Algeria. Me eat Prussians; much
steal, much.’
“There were ten degrees of frost. I shivered
at sight of this negro in white duck. He took
me by the arm and made me go inside. I noticed
an immense flag that he was going to place outside
his door as soon as we had left, for he had some shame.”
I read this sign, traced by the hand of some accomplice
“’Armykitchen of M. Timbuctoo,
“’Formerly
Cook to H. M. the Emperor.
“‘A Parisian
Artist. Moderate Prices.’
“In spite of the despair that was gnawing at
my heart, I could not help laughing, and I left my
negro to his new enterprise.
“Was not that better than taking him prisoner?
“You have just seen that he made a success of
it, the rascal.
“Bezieres to-day belongs to the Germans.
The ‘Restaurant Timbuctoo’ is the beginning
of a retaliation.”
The five friends had finished dinner, five men of
the world, mature, rich, three married, the two others
bachelors. They met like this every month in
memory of their youth, and after dinner they chatted
until two o’clock in the morning. Having
remained intimate friends, and enjoying each other’s
society, they probably considered these the pleasantest
evenings of their lives. They talked on every
subject, especially of what interested and amused
Parisians. Their conversation was, as in the
majority of salons elsewhere, a verbal rehash of what
they had read in the morning papers.
One of the most lively of them was Joseph de Bardon,
a celibate living the Parisian life in its fullest
and most whimsical manner. He was not a debauche
nor depraved, but a singular, happy fellow, still young,
for he was scarcely forty. A man of the world
in its widest and best sense, gifted with a brilliant,
but not profound, mind, with much varied knowledge,
but no true erudition, ready comprehension without
true understanding, he drew from his observations,
his adventures, from everything he saw, met with and
found, anecdotes at once comical and philosophical,
and made humorous remarks that gave him a great reputation
for cleverness in society.
He was the after dinner speaker and had his own story
each time, upon which they counted, and he talked
without having to be coaxed.
As he sat smoking, his elbows on the table, a petit
verre half full beside his plate, half torpid in an
atmosphere of tobacco blended with steaming coffee,
he seemed to be perfectly at home. He said between
two whiffs:
