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Updated: July 17, 2025
Then suddenly something went off with a boom; it was the first stroke of the great Hugo clock under the dome. Six pairs of double doors opened simultaneously, six pairs of golden commissionaires were overthrown like ninepins, and in a fraction of time six companies of determined and remorseless women had swept like Prussian cavalry into the interior of the doomed edifice.
It was a strange pleasure to meet again and again in the streets of the town the faces, or types of them, that we had just seen on canvas so old. In the Low Countries, the porters have the grand title of commissionaires. They carry trunks and bundles, black boots, and act as valets de place. As guides, they are quite as intolerable in Amsterdam as their brethren in other cities.
But such a firm could easily make them removable by arranging for them to be called for and taken up river a few stages, as the boats are. The hire could be fixed at so much per tent, and a camp servant could also be provided. Commissionaires and ex-soldiers with good characters could be found employment in the early autumn, when they now find it difficult to earn a wage.
Paul interrupted me. "Yes, with an Italian who looks more like a strumpet than a duchess. However, that is no business of mine. Do just as you please." I was in a state of perplexity. I had written to the City of Paris to retain our rooms, and now I did not know what to do. Two commissionaires followed us with our luggage.
The road now led down upon the lake, which lay gleaming like a sheet of silver beneath the morning sun. We entered the poor, faded, straggling town of Desenzano, where the usual motley assemblage of commissionaires, albergo-masters, dwarfs, beggars, and idlers of all kinds, waited to receive us.
Recognising the disadvantages that bore so hard on the deserving old soldier, recognising too, in the words of the late Sir John Burgoyne, that "there are many qualities peculiar to the soldier and sailor, and imbibed by him in the ordinary course of his service, which, added to good character and conduct, may render such men more eligible than others for various services in civil life," Captain Edward Walter founded the Corps of Commissionaires.
"Yes, with an Italian who looks more like a dancer than a duchess. However, that is no business of mine. Do just as you please." I was in a state of perplexity. I had written to the City of Paris to retain our rooms, and now I did not know what to do. Two commissionaires followed us with our luggage.
Over every portal was a purple warning: 'Beware of pickpockets, male and female. No possible male pickpockets, however, were visible to the eye; perhaps they were disguised as ladies. The seven crowds wedged themselves closer and closer, clutched tighter and tighter their purses, and stared at the golden commissionaires through the glass doors with a glance more and more ferocious.
He felt nauseated by all this. He held those deputies in contempt who besieged his cabinet and filled his antechamber in order to beg, claim and demand. All of them sought something, and they were almost strangled by the solicitations of their own constituents. They appeared to Sulpice to be rather the commissionaires of universal suffrage than the servants.
Each of the commissionaires carried a large dish of cream tarts under a cover, which they at once removed; and the young man made the round of the company, and pressed these confections upon every one's acceptance with an exaggerated courtesy. Sometimes the offer was laughingly accepted; sometimes it was firmly, or even harshly, rejected.
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