t. They were,
whenever I entered the place, engaged in eating a meal of their own
at a table near a large fire at one end of the room. When guests
appeared they all rose, uttered voluble welcomes, and shook hands
with the strangers. There were, besides the family table, four
others, all of rough deal, much stained, far from clean and without
table-cloths. The seats were narrow benches. If you leaned back you
bumped the man at the next table. The floor was sanded and hens
walked about picking up the fragments which the diners dropped. When
I knew the place first it was patronised chiefly by sailors,
Belgians, and the A.S.C. officers who discovered it.

Ordering dinner was an interesting business. There was no menu card.
Monsieur and his family talked a kind of French which none of us
could ever understand. Also they talked at a terrific speed and all
at once, circling round us. We knew that they were naming the kinds
of food available, for we caught words like _potage_ and _poisson_
now and then. Our plan was to sit still and nod occasionally. One of
the daughters made a note of the points at which we nodded, and we
hoped for the best. The soup was generally ready. Everything else was
cooked before our eyes on the fire behind the family table.

Madame did the cooking. The rest of the party sat down again to their
own meal. Monsieur exhorted his wife occasionally. The daughters took
it in turn to get up and bring us each course as madame finished
cooking it. In this way we got a hot and excellent dinner. A good
digestion was promoted by the long gaps between the courses. It was
impossible to eat fast. Monsieur offered his guests no great choice
in wine, but what he had was surprisingly good.

When dinner was over and the bill, a very moderate one, paid, the
whole family shook hands with us again and wished us every kind of
happiness and good luck. Monsieur then conducted us to a back door,
and let us loose into an alley quite as dark and filthy as the one by
which we entered. He was always firm about refusing to allow us to go
by the way we came. I have no idea what his reasons were, but the
plan of smuggling us out of the establishment gave us a pleasurable
feeling that we had been breaking some law by being there. There is
nothing that I ever could find in King's Regulations on the subject,
so I suppose that if we sinned at all it must have been against some
French municipal regulation.

That restaurant may be quit