The girl who waits on it has gold earrings dangling against her white neck and a cap with turned up wings, like Moliere’s soubrettes, and her sparkling blue eyes would incline anyone to ask her for something more than mere plates.  But the guests!  What guests!  All habitues!  At the upper end sat a creature in a velvet jacket and a cashmere waistcoat.  He tied his napkin around the bottles that had been uncorked, in order to be able to distinguish them.  He ladled the soup.  On his left, sat a man in a light grey frock-coat, with the cuffs and collar trimmed with a sort of curly material representing fur; he ate with his hat on and was the professor of music at the local college.  But he has grown tired of his profession and is anxious to find some place that would bring him from eight to twelve hundred francs at the most.  He does not care so much about the salary, what he desires is the consideration that attaches to such a place.  As he was always late, he requested that the courses be brought up again from the kitchen, and if he did not like them, he would send them back untouched; he sneezed and expectorated and rocked his chair and hummed and leaned his elbows on the table and picked his teeth.

Everybody respects him, the waitress admires everything he says, and is, I am sure, in love with him.  The high opinion he has of himself shows in his smile, his speech, his gestures, his silence, and in his way of wearing his hair; it emanates from his entire obnoxious personality.

Opposite to us sat a grey-haired, plump man with red hands and thick, moist lips, who looked at us so persistently and annoyingly, while he masticated his food, that we felt like throwing the carafes at him.  The other guests were insignificant and only contributed to the picture.

One evening the conversation fell upon a woman of the environs who had left her husband and gone to America with her lover, and who, the previous week, and passed through Saint-Pol on her way home, and had stopped at the inn.  Everybody wondered at her audacity, and her name was accompanied by all sorts of unflattering epithets.  Her whole life was passed in review by these people, and they all laughed contemptuously and insulted her and grew quite hot over the argument.  They would have liked to have her there to tell her what they thought of her and see what she would say.  Tirades against luxury, virtuous horror, moral maxims, hatred of wealth, words with a double meaning, shrugs, everything, in fact, was used to crush this woman, who, judging by the ferocity these ruffians displayed in their attacks, must have been pretty, refined, and charming.  Our hearts beat indignantly in our breasts, and if we had taken another meal in Saint-Pol, I am sure that something would have happened.

CHAPTER X.

SAINT-MALO.

Saint-Malo, which is built right on the ocean and is enclosed by ramparts, looks like a crown of stones, the gems of which are the machicolations.  The breakers dash against its walls, and when the tide is low they gently unfurl on the sand.  Little rocks covered with sea-weed dot the beach and look like black spots on its light surface.  The larger ones, which are upright and smooth, support the fortifications, thus making them appear higher than they really are.