not merely "number five." There was
little need for the bellowing and shouting from one end of the room to
the other, because the head waiter himself had an eye everywhere. The
word "addition," which people think it good taste in the seventies and
eighties to employ when asking for their bills, was never heard. People
did not profess to know the nature of the arithmetical operation by
which the total of their liabilities was arrived at; they left that to
the cashier and the rest of the underlings.

No coal or gas was used in the Cafe de Paris: lamps and wood fires
upstairs; charcoal, and only that of a peculiar kind, in the kitchens,
which might have been a hundred miles distant, for all we knew, for
neither the rattling of dishes nor the smell of preparation betrayed
their vicinity. A charming, subdued hum of voices attested the presence
of two or three score of human beings attending to the inner man; the
idiotic giggle, the affected little shrieks of the shopgirl or housemaid
promoted to be the companion of the quasi-man of the world was never
heard there. The _cabinet particulier_ was not made a feature of the
Cafe de Paris, and suppers were out of the question. Now and then the
frank laughter of the younger members of a family party, and that was
all. As a rule, however, there were few strangers at the Cafe de Paris,
or what are called chance customers, as distinct from periodical ones.
But there were half a score of tables absolutely sacred from the
invasion of no matter whom, such as those of the Marquis du Hallays,
Lord Seymour, the Marquis de St. Cricq, M. Romieu, Prince Rostopchine,
Prince Soltikoff, Dr. Veron, etc., etc. Lord Palmerston, when in Paris,
scarcely ever dined anywhere else than at the Cafe de Paris--of course I
mean when dining at a public establishment.

Almost every evening there was an interchange of dishes or of wines
between those tables; for instance, Dr. Veron, of whom I will have a
good deal to say in these notes, and who was very fond of Musigny
vintage, rarely missed offering some to the Marquis du Hallays, who, in
his turn, sent him of the finest dishes from his table. For all these
men not only professed to eat well, but never to suffer from
indigestion. Their gastronomy was really an art, but an art aided by
science which was applied to the simplest dish. One of these was _veau a
la casserole_, which figured at least three times a week on the bill of
fare, and the like of which I ha