It was after the hour of the table d'hote,
so that I was obliged to make a solitary supper from the relics
of its ampler board. The weather was chilly; I was seated alone
in one end of a great gloomy dining-room, and, my repast being
over, I had the prospect before me of a long dull evening,
without any visible means of enlivening it. I summoned mine host
and requested something to read; he brought me the whole literary
stock of his household, a Dutch family Bible, an almanac in the
same language, and a number of old Paris newspapers. As I sat
dozing over one of the latter, reading old news and stale
criticisms, my ear was now and then struck with bursts of
laughter which seemed to proceed from the kitchen. Every one that
has travelled on the Continent must know how favorite a resort
the kitchen of a country inn is to the middle and inferior order
of travellers, particularly in that equivocal kind of weather
when a fire becomes agreeable toward evening. I threw aside the
newspaper and explored my way to the kitchen, to take a peep at
the group that appeared to be so merry. It was composed partly of
travellers who had arrived some hours before in a diligence, and
partly of the usual attendants and hangers-on of inns.
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