THE CHATEAU. 411 



defenceless guest, as she leaned over him. She eyed the errors of the 

 servants with a kind of pugnacious ferocity as she called out " no igi 

 no Id " and as the attendants for the day had never served in such 

 capacity before, the word of command from Mrs. Simpson, in execrable 

 French, and always in the shrill accent of reproof, inspired the obedience 

 of the servitors with such precipitation, that their rapid counter-marches, 

 advances, retreats with the recurring collision of things brought in 

 and things withdrawn, supplied an admirable representation of a sham 

 engagement. 



Blunt's very soul was concentrated in two or three dishes, on which 

 he had bestowed the acme of his oriental skill, and as he was bustling 

 through the honours of the table, with a sort of petulant anxiety, his 

 ardour of despatch was painfully checked by the would-be courtesy of 

 certain of his guests, who deferred to the precedence of each other, or 

 {( preferred to wait a little ;" so that the Indian, who was ready to 

 to dispense the reeking contents of a soup tureen, was left in the 

 auxiliary position, with a plate in one hand and a ladle in the other, till 

 the contest on priority had subsided. But there was one distinguished 

 individual at the table who had no doubt whatever on the subject of 

 precedence ; and this was Master Theodosius Thompson, who was 

 pouting like a moulting bull-finch, and just arranging his lovely 

 features into unison before he treated the society to a burst of blub- 

 bering. Mr. Blunt, who wished the urchin at the devil, attempted 

 some pacificatory remark, which Master Thompson treated with becom- 

 ing sulks, and as the charming youth's indisputable rights had been so 

 rudely violated by the host, he chose to rise from table, with his face 

 as red as scarlet, and saying he did not want any dinner, retreated, to 

 the Indian's consternation, to the garden, where the elite of Mr. Blunt's 

 self-destined wall-fruit, of necessity, became a prey to so intractable 

 and greedy an intruder. As to the repast, where the aspiring 

 host expected a discriminating approbation, the Smiths, who ventured 

 upon every dish, inquired its name. Thompson, like a steady work- 

 man, carried on his operations in unbroken silence. Mrs. Dry-rot 

 drooped. The major, who, notwithstanding his proverbial stinginess, 

 was all for grandeur and effect, pretended to a fund of delicate research 

 and information ; for he had studied all the cartes of the Parisian cafes, 

 though he never had the soul to order any dish exceeding half a frank 

 in cost ; and though pomposity itself, the tyrant passion of an Indian, 

 could never drive him to expand the battans of his salle a manger to a 

 guest, he talked magnificently of his chef and valet ; the former a half 

 cast Frenchman whom the major had met on board on his return from 

 India, and who had picked up his perfections in the galley of a 

 country-trader while the valet was a pining starveling in a guady coat, 

 a ghost in livery, who daily stunned the neighbourhood by his per- 

 formance for an hour together on his master's dinner bell ; so serious a 

 prelude to so sad a sequence, that the music of the famished child was 

 likened by the jesters to the singing of the swan before its dissolution. 



