I had just helped him light the first blaze in the big baronial fireplace, an occupation I revel in, for to me the kindling of a fire is the gathering of half a dozen friends together, each log nudging his neighbor, the cheer of good comradeship warming them all. And a roaring fire it was when I had piled high the logs, swept the hearth, and made it ready for the choice spirits who were to share it with me. For years we have had our outings--or rather our "in-tings" before it--red-letter days for us in which the swish of a petticoat is never heard, and we are free to enjoy a "man's time" together; red-letter days, too, in the calendar of the Inn, when even Lemois, tired out with the whirl of the season, takes on a new lease of life.
His annual rejuvenation began at dawn to-day, when he disappeared in the direction of the market and returned an hour later with his procession of baskets filled with fish and lobsters fresh out of the sea a mile away (caught at daylight), some capons, a string of pigeons, and an armful of vegetables snatched in the nick of time from the early grave of an impending frost.
As for the more important items, the Chablis Moutonne and Roumanée Conti--rare Burgundies--they were still asleep in their cobwebs on a low Spanish bench that had once served as a temporary resting-place outside a cardinal's door.
Until to-night Lemois and I have dined in the kitchen. You would too could you see it. Not by any manner of means the sort of an interior the name suggests, but one all shining brass, rare pottery, copper braziers, and resplendent pewter, reflecting the dancing blaze of a huge open hearth with a spit turned by the weight of a cannon ball fired by the British, and on which--the spit, not the ball--are roasted the joints, chickens, and game for which the Inn is famous, Pierre, the sole remaining chef--there are three in the season--ineffectually cudgelling his French pate under his short-cropped, shoe-brush hair for some dish better than the last.
Because, however, of the immediate gathering of the clan, I have abandoned the kitchen and have shifted my quarters to the Marmouset. Over it up a steep, twisted staircase with a dangling rope for banisters is my bedroom, the Chambre de Cure, next to the Chambre de Officier--where the gluttonous king tossed on his royal bed (a true story, I am told, with all the details set forth in the State Archives of France). Mine has a high-poster with a half lambrequin, or bed curtain, that being all Lemois could find, and he being too honest an antiquary to piece it out with modern calico or chintz. My guests, of course, will take their pick of the adjoining rooms--Madame Sévigné's, Grèvin's, the Chambre du Roi, and the others--and may thank their stars that it is not a month back. Then, even if they had written ten days ahead, they would have been received with a shrug--one of Lemois' most engaging shrugs tinged with grief--at his inability to provide better accommodation for their comfort, under which one could have seen a slight trace of suppressed glee at the prosperity of the season. They would then doubtless have been presented with a massive key unlocking the door of a box of a bedroom over the cake-shop, or above the apothecary's, or next to the man who mends furniture--all in the village of Dives itself.