"Now mind, I want to see everything, and be told who everybody is," said Mrs. Tota as she got out of the cab, and I promised to do my best to carry out her wishes, and suggested that we should peep into the room on the ground floor before we went upstairs.
The long room, with its golden paper, its mirrors painted with flowers and trellis-work, its little counter piled with fruit, was crowded with diners, not one of the many little tables being vacant. A great hum of talk fell on our ears, and many of the gentlemen at the tables were gesticulating as only foreigners can. I told Mrs. Tota that at least half the guests were musicians or singers, and immediately she was all attention. One gentleman, with long hair and a close-clipped beard, she recognised as a well-known violinist; and a gentleman with a black moustache and a great bush of rebellious hair, she identified as a celebrated baritone, though he looked strange, she thought, without a frock-coat, lavender kid gloves, and a roll of music in his hands.
In the blue room on the first floor the tables were mostly occupied by couples, and Mrs. Tota wished to know if this was where the married musicians came. The gentleman with the clean-shaven face at the next table to ours, deep in conversation with a very pretty lady in a fur toque, was certainly a doctor, and the gentleman with a white moustache, who had secured the table in the little bow-window, was evidently a soldier; the two ladies dining _tête-à-tête_ did not look musical, but on the first floor, as on the ground floor, the majority of the guests were evidently of the artistic temperament.
The _Bortsch_ was excellent, and when the _sole Pagani_ made its appearance M. Meschini, the partner of M. Pagani, came to our table to ask whether the dish was approved of. "It is beautiful," said little Mrs. Tota. "What are the wonderful little pink things with such a delicious taste?" M. Meschini, without moving a muscle of his face, told her that they were shrimps, which, with fresh mushrooms and _moules_, help to give a distinctiveness to this excellent dish. "How was I to know a shrimp without his head and tail and scales?" said Mrs. Tota, when M. Meschini had moved on.