I put up at the “Hotel de Paris,” which was both comfortable and economical.  Madame Rufin who kept it had entered into the spirit of her business without losing her French politeness, and thus the inn had got a reputation.  As soon as I was in my room she came to ask me if I were satisfied, and to make divers arrangements for my comfort.  There was a table d’hote, and those who ate in their private rooms paid double.

“This arrangement,” I said, “may suit you, but for the present it will not suit me.  I want to dine in my own room, but I don’t want to pay double; I will therefore pay as if I were in the public room, but if you like you need only send me up half the number of dishes.”

“I agree, on the condition that you sup with me; we will not put it in the accounts, and you will only meet friends at my little suppers.”

I thought her proposal so curious a one that I had a great inclination to laugh, but finding it at the same time very advantageous I accepted frankly, and as if we had long been friends.

On the first day I was tired, and did not sup with her till the day following.  Madame Rufin had a husband who attended to the cooking, and a son, but neither of them came to these suppers.  The first time I went to one of them I met an elderly but agreeable and sensible gentleman.  He lodged in a room adjoining mine, and called himself Baron Treidel; his sister had married the Duke of Courland, Jean Ernest Biron, or Birlen.  The baron, who was extremely pleasant, became my friend, and remained so for the couple of months I spent in Berlin.  I also met a Hamburg merchant, named Greve, and his wife, whom he had just married and had brought to Berlin that she might see the marvels of the Warrior-King’s Court.  She was as pleasant as her husband, and I paid her an assiduous court.  A lively and high-spirited individual called Noel, who was the sole and beloved cook of his Prussian Majesty, was the fourth person.  He only came rarely to the suppers on account of his duties in the king’s kitchen.  As I have said, his majesty had only this one cook, and Noel had only one scullion to help him.

M. Noel, the ambassador of the French Republic at the Hague, is, as I am assured, the son of this cook, who was an excellent man.  And here I must say, in despite of my hatred for the French Revolutionary Government, that I am not at all ill pleased that a man of talents should be enabled to fill exalted offices, which under the old system of privilege were often occupied by fools.

If it had not been for the culinary skill of Noel the cook, the famous Atheist physician Lametrie would not have died of indigestion, for the pie he succeeded in eating in his extremity was made by Noel.