Alfred; or, The Adventures of a French Gentleman — page 49: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

35 ALFRED; OR ADVENTURES respectable class of tradesmen, attorneys’ upper clerks, actors, the gentlemen who work in the government offices of their Excellencies the Ministers, and individuals of that stamp, celebrate weddings, birth-days, holidays, &c. The Cadran Bleu is consequently in ~ great vogue ; and it enjoyed, perhaps, even a higher repute in the times when Champignon opened a similar establishment, which, being in the same neighbourhood, was instituted with the express determination of rivalling the monopolizing restaurant. Champignon was a short, fat, asthmatic man, with small grey eyes, a pug nose, a wide mouth, and a good set of teeth. His age might be about torty—but his wisdom kept not pace with his years ; for he had scarcely two ideas, and those were connected with gas- tronomy. All his szmiles were drawn from delicious viands—his metaphors bore perpetual reference to wines or liqueurs—and tie only flowers of rhetoric he was ever known to garnish his discourse with, were universally founded on fricandeaus, coteleties a la jardi- niere, filet de beeuf saute, &c. &c. Kc. It would have been well for Champignon had he attended to naught save his kitchen and his cookery-book ; for his business throve even better than his most sanguine anticipations had ex- pected, and the Cadran Rouge, or Red Clock, soon spread its fame throughout the whole neighbourhood of the Boulevard du Temple and the Marais; or, to use the chivalrons language of ancient days, ‘‘its reputation was speedily bruited abroad.” But Champignon’s unlucky ideas of opposition and rivalry led him into a sad dilemma, which eventually caused him to take the high road for Brest, and which has now procured for ourselves and our readers the pleasure of his acquaintance. It appears that the worthy family of a grocer in the Rue Montmorenci, having resolved to celebrate the birth-day of some superannuated uncle, addressed a letter one morning by the two-penny post to the master of the Cadran Bleu, informing him that a party of five or six and twenty would dine at his house on a certain day, and that he must prepare a sumptuous repast, at which no luxury nor expense was to be grudged, so that the whole affair might be on a magnificent scale. This welcome epistle en- closed a bank-note of five hundred francs, or twenty pounds ster- ling of British money. It happened, through the negligence of the postman, that the letter fell into the hands of Champignon, who instantly wrote a reply, in which he declared that the Cadran Bleu had ceased to exist, that he had set up in the same line of business at the Cadran Rouge, that the ancient proprietor of the Cadran Bleu was a sleeping partner with him, and that if the family and its guests did not express the most unequivocal approbation of the way in which he would treat them, their money should be restored. This daring cheat succeeded. Little did the honest grocer care who ‘ founded the feast,’ or at what house his friends partook of it, so long as it was good; and with regard to the perfection of the meats, the pastry, the dessert, and the wine, there was not a single dissentient voice. To be brief, the stratagem passed off so well, that Champignon, emboldened by the event of his artifice, soon adopted such various and crooked devices to abstract the custom of GOmiGcdooks (E(0)