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When he had strolled back to his hotel in the evening the time was approaching for the table-d'hote. Having seated himself rather early, he spent the few minutes of waiting in looking over his pocket-book, and putting a few finishing touches to the afternoon performance whilst the objects were fresh in his memory.
Unfortunately the cart with our luggage had not arrived, so it was in clothes borrowed from kind friends that we at last sat down, a party of about forty, to a sort of table-d'hôte dinner, and it continued to pour with rain during the whole evening, only clearing up just at bed-time. Tuesday, August 29th.
Then ensued the delightful and stimulating hour that has now become a feature of the day; an hour in which the remembrance of the table-d'hote dinner at the Hydro, going on at identically the same time, only stirs me to a keener joy and gratitude.
We found the guests at the table-d'hôte chiefly English, travellers like ourselves, and some of our party recognised London acquaintance among those who, upon hearing our intention to proceed the following day up the Seine to Paris, recommended the boat by which they had arrived the Etoile.
Instead of being invited to breakfast with the blue-bloused pleasant driver of the diligence, I shall expect to find at table-d'hote half a score of English undergraduates, members of the bicyclist club, or a party of enterprising ladies from Chicago. A word about Autun itself, a town that improves marvellously on acquaintance. This was my third visit, and I found it more attractive than ever.
Did you ever meet Mr Snapley? Esquilias, dictumque petunt a Vimine collem JUV. * "I observed a gentleman in black," said our informant, "who seemed to fix me across the table-d'hôte, at dinner, in a way which soon showed me I was an object of interest to him. It was very odd! We were not in Austria! I could not have offended the police nor in Spain, the Inquisition.
All, however, were absolutely without attraction of any sort; and I somewhat bitterly remembered the mot of double meaning, with which my friend had entertained me at parting. Venus was certainly not visible at the Swampville table-d'hote: for the presiding divinity was a perfect Hecate; and her attendant damsels could have found no place in the train of the Cytherean goddess.
As the noble landlady was suffering from headache, the dapper waitress took charge of us, provided us with rooms, and then installed us at the early table-d'hôte, where a number of the officers of the garrison, with some other regular diners, whom we learnt to recognize in time as the town bailiff, the apothecary and the advocate, were despatching, in the midst of great clatter and bustle, the inevitable kalbsfleisch and mehlspeis.
But on looking at the Italian, who stood in the light of a street-lamp, he assumed a servile expression. "I beg your pardon, sir," said he, suddenly changing his tone. "There is a restaurant near this, a sort of table-d'hote, where the cooking is pretty bad and they serve cheese in the soup.
The narrator was an ordinary table-d'hote Smoking-Room tourist, but he could hardly recount the story without tears. He tried, but it was impossible to effect a rescue, and he had to leave the wretched mother where she was. As he said, "Considering what chamois are, it sounds absolutely incredible that the mother should have been able to overcome her shyness of mankind and stay by the young one.
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