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Updated: October 1, 2025
Rows on rows of two-storied, gray-stuccoed buildings that might be dwellings, or might be offices, all showing some traces of feminine taste and supervision in a flower or a curtain that belied the legended "Comptoir," or "Direction," over their portals. Mr. Clinch thought of Boston and State Street, of New York and Wall Street, and became coldly contemptuous.
The earliest visit in uniform, of course was to Baron Didelot, whose official title is "Commandant Superieur des Etablissements de la Cote d'Or et du Gabon;" the following was to M. H. S. L'Aulnois, "Lieutenant de Vaisseau et Commandant Particulier du Comptoir de Gabon." These gentlemen have neat bungalows and gardens; they may spend their days ashore, but they are very careful to sleep on board.
I entered a glover's shop with my mind I suppose occupied with divers meditations, and like a true uncourteous Englishman forgot to take off my hat to the Dame de Comptoir, as she is styled, but having obtained what I sought, in the act of departing I took up a hat which was on the counter, not dreaming that I had already one upon my head, but as I was making my obeissance to the mistress of the shop, she observed, very archly, that she should have thought Monsieur might be satisfied with having a hat on his head, without requiring to have one in his hand; surprised at finding myself absolutely committing a robbery, I made the best excuses the subject would admit, and retired after having furnished a subject of amusement for Madame, for Monsieur whose hat I had so illegally appropriated to myself, and to some pretty laughing-looking demoiselles who were ensconced behind a counter.
Fronting the former and by the side of an avenue that runs towards the sea is an unfinished magazine of stone, and to the right, as you front the sun, lies the garden of the "Commandant du Comptoir," choked with tropical weeds. Altogether there is a scattered look about the metropolis of the "Gabon," which numbers one foot of house to a thousand of "compound."
There is no rule of good manners or morals which makes it improper, at a café, to fix one's eyes upon the dame de comptoir; the lady is, in the nature of things, a part of your consummation. We were therefore free to admire without restriction the handsomest person I had ever seen give change for a five-franc piece.
"They say, Jean," continued Babet, her mind running in a very practical and womanly way upon the price of commodities and good bargains, "they say, Jean, that the Bourgeois Philibert will not give in like the other merchants. He sets the Intendant at defiance, and continues to buy and sell in his own comptoir as he has always done, in spite of the Friponne." "Yes, Babet! that is what they say.
Monsieur." "Will you tell me, Monsieur Choucru, what is to prevent me from giving a view of the best restaurant in Courbevoie?" Madame Choucru, from behind the comptoir, uttered a little scream.
Osmin took to selling pastilles for a livelihood, and the lady got employment as dame de comptoir in a coffeehouse. As to the dey, he had left Naples with the intention of going to England, in which country, as he had been informed, a man is at liberty to sell his wife, if he may not drown her. He was taken ill, however, on the road, and obliged to stop at Leghorn, where he died."
The swampy jungle is not cleared off from about the Comptoir, and presently the perfume of the fat, rank weeds; and the wretched bridges, a few planks spanning black and fetid mud, drove us northwards or inland, towards the neat house and grounds of the "Commandant Particulier."
So universal is this custom that there is hardly an orator to-day at the French bar or in the Senate, who has not broken his first lance in some such obscure tournament, under the smiling glances of the dame du comptoir.
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