"I shall therefore have the honour to leave
monsieur?"

"Exactly, you will have that honour, most
courteous Constant.  You may also have the
honour of staying out as late as you like on this
side of six: for I can't expect to be home before
that time; but please sit up for me, that you may
know the results of the campaign.  It may be
an Austerlitz, you know, but it may turn out a
Waterloo.  Good night. I have no vices to
warn you against, for you don't seem to be
troubled with any––or else you are up to them
all, and keep them very dark indeed."

And so saying, Mr. Blunt waved his hand to
his body servant, and strode away in the direction
of Pall Mall.

The valet paid the coachman five shillings in
excess of his fare, at which jarvey drove away
rejoicing.  His master had flung him his cloak
before leaving, saying that he would put on an
overcoat, lighter in texture, at his club. Jean
Baptiste Constant enveloped himself in this
garment, but did not throw it into any
melo-dramatic folds. It ceased to be the mantle of a
Byronic-looking patrician. It was now merely
the cloak of a highly accomplished gentleman's
valet, who knew his cloak and kept it.

"Yes," murmured Monsieur Jean Baptiste
Constant very softly to himself, as he walked round
the hoarding of those old Mews once occupying
the area of Trafalgar-square, but then just in
process of demolition, "it may be Austerlitz,
and it may be Waterloo––more than Waterloo––
it may end in St. Helena and captivity, and
death.  Ah! je tiens l'enfant. Ah, that dear
old nabob at Cutchapore who writes such
pretty letters about his little niece. Ah! le
beau jeu que le vingt et un. Aliens voir la
Louve."

It was rather late at night to pay a visit to a
she-wolf; but Monsieur Constant seemed bent
on the enterprise, and diving into St. Martin's–lane,
and through the mazes of Cranbourne-alley,
was very soon in Leicester-place,
Leicester-square.

CHAPTER VIII. THE HÔTEL RATAPLAN.

I DON"T know what has become of the Hôtel
Rataplan, in these days. The neighbourhood of
"Laycesterre-squarr" is no more exempt from
mutability than its Anglo-Saxon vicinage; and
Rataplan may have faded into decadence, or
undergone an aristocratic change of name, or
may have been swept away altogether.  It is
not a matter of much consequence. I am treating
of the year '36; and in '36 the Rataplan
flourished exceedingly, and was very much the
Hôtel Rataplan indeed.

Désiré Rataplan kept it.  He was a gross fat
Frenchman.  He looked not only a landlord,
but a cook; and a capital cook he was.  Who
lards fat pullets should himself be fat, and
Rataplan was larded all over. He was the most
unctuous-looking man it is possible to conceive,
and his face, like that of many other fat men,
was perfectly pale and colourless. The great
art of figure-painters is, I have heard, dexterously
to represent flesh that has not an adventitious
teint basané in immediate juxtaposition
with white linen.  For this reason the clumsy
painters, when they give us a man or woman
dressed in white, usually make the flesh swarthy,
or sallow, or sanguinolent.  Rubens is considered
to have been the only painter who really
triumphed over the difficulties of chair contre
linge. His successors should have come to the
Hôtel Rataplan and studied its proprietor.
Rataplan was head cook in his own hotel, and wore
the orthodox costume of chef.  His jacket, his
nightcap, his long apron, his duck trousers, his
slippers, were all white, and dirty white.  His
face and hands were dirty white too, and yet
the contrast between his lineaments and his
habiliments was marked with satisfactory
strength. It was the texture, perhaps, that did
it. Otherwise, face and garments were identical.
He looked like a pierrot who had grown fat.
No, he didn't, he looked like what he was––a
cook.

Rataplan's countenance was so seamed and
pitted with traces of the small-pox, that his
cheeks presented a not remote resemblance to
one of his own colanders.  He had very little
hair, and that was grey, and cropped close to his
head à la malcontent, and all but concealed
under his nightcap.  Not a trace of beard or
whisker or moustache, did he show.  Perhaps
the heat of the fire had dried up the capillary
forces, or the steam of many saucepans had acted
as a depilatory.  He was splashed in many places
with ancient gravy, giving him the appearance of
a blotted skin of parchment. He wore ear-rings.
He had a thin gold ring on his left
hand to tongue; and, strange to tell, Rataplan
wore over his heart a discoloured red ribbon
sewed on the breast of his jacket, and which he
declared to be that of the French Legion of
Honour.

"Received from the hand of the Emperor
himself on the field of Arcis-sur-Aube," he was
accustomed to say.  "C'est là que nous avons
flanqué une raclée à ces canailles d'Autrichiens.
Et les Cosaques! hein! c'est Désiré Rataplan
qui leur donna à boire et a manger en 1813. Ma
parole d'honneur, je les ai accommodés à toutes
sauces ces Cosaques."

He declared that he had the cross of the
Legion itself, up-stairs in a box.  He had not
always been a cook. Désiré Rataplan had
served in the Grand Army.  He had fought at
the Beresina.  He had been at Leipsic.  He
only missed Waterloo because the regiment
to which he belonged had been stationed
behind the Loire.  "Et on m'a appelé brigand
de la Loire, moi qui vous parle!" he would
say.

His regiment, he stated, was the
Trente-septième Léger; but this his hearers would
obstinately refuse to believe. That a soldier of
the Grand Army should become an hotel keeper,