and Mme. AUBOURG, their son and daughter, who, with the assistance
of a few neat-handed Phyllises, do everything themselves for their
customers, and are at once the best of cooks, _sommeliers_, and
waiters. So cheery, so full of life and fun, so quick, so attentive,
serving you as if you were the only visitor in the place, though
the little inn is as full as it can be crammed, and there are fifty
persons breakfasting there at the same moment.

[Illustration: Mademoiselle qui sait attendre.]

Every room being occupied, and every nook in the garden too, we are
accommodated with a rustic table in the "Grand Salon," part of which
is screened off as a kind of bar. The "Grand Salon" is also full of
quaint pictures and eccentric curiosities; it is cool and airy, bright
flowers are in the windows, and the floor is sanded. We had stopped
here to refresh the horses, intending to breakfast at Etretat. But so
delighted were we, a party of "_deux couverts_," with this good hotel,
and still more with the _famille Aubourg_, that, though we had driven
away, and were a mile further on our road to Etretat, we decided--and
Counsellor Hunger was our adviser too--on returning to this house
where we had noticed breakfast-table tastefully laid out for some
expected visitors, and had been in the kitchen, and with our own eyes
had seen, and with our own noses had smelt the appetising preparation
for the parties already in possession. So we drove back again rapidly,
much to the delight of our coachman, who had become very melancholy,
and was evidently forming a very poor opinion of persons who could
lose the chance of a breakfast _chez Aubourg_.

[Illustration: "Le vrai dernier!"]

How pleased Mlle. AUBOURG, the waitress, appeared to be when
we returned! All the family prepared to kill the fatted calf
figuratively, as it took the shape of the sweetest and freshest
shrimps as _hors d'oeuvre_, and then it became an omelette _au lard_
("O La!") absolutely unsurpassable, and a _poulet saute_, which was
about the best that ever we tasted. A good bottle of the ordinary
generous, fruit, and then a cup of recently roasted and freshly
ground coffee with a thimbleful of some special Normandy cognac,--in
which our cheery host joined us, and we all drank one another's
healths,--completed as good a _dejeuner_ as any man or woman of simple
tastes could possibly desire.

[Illustration: M. Aubourg fils comes out for a blow. The Son and Air.]

Then the c