We usher the reader, at the clerks' breakfast-time, into the notary's gloomy office.
A thing unheard-of, stupendous, marvelous! instead of the meager and unattractive stew, brought every morning to these young people by the _departed_ housekeeper, Madame Séraphin, an enormous cold turkey, served up on an old paper box, ornamented the middle of one of the tables of the office, flanked by two loaves of bread, some Dutch cheese, and three bottles of sealed wine; an old leaden inkstand, filled with a mixture of salt and pepper, served as a salt-cellar; such was the bill of fare.
Each clerk, armed with his knife and a formidable appetite, awaited the hour of the feast with hungry impatience; some of them were raging over the absence of the head clerk, without whom they could not commence their breakfast pursuant to etiquette.
This radical change in the ordinary meals of the clerks of Jacques Ferrand announced an excessive domestic revolution.
The following conversation, eminently Boeotian (if we may be allowed to borrow this word from the witty writer who has made it popular), will throw some light upon this important question:
"Behold a turkey who never expected, when he entered into life, to appear at breakfast on the table of our governor's quill-drivers!"
"Just so; when the governor entered on the life of a notary, in like manner he never expected to give his clerks a turkey for breakfast."
"For this turkey is ours," cried Stump-in-the-Gutters, the office-boy, with greedy eyes.
"My friend you forget; this turkey must be a foreigner to you."
"And as a Frenchman, you should hate a foreigner."
"All that can be done is to give you the claws."
"Emblem of the velocity with which you run your errands."
"I think, at least, I have a right to the carcass," said the boy, murmuring.
"It might be granted; but you have no right to it, just as it was with the Charter of 1814, which was only another carcass of liberty," said the Mirabeau of the office.
"Apropos of carcass," said one of the party. "May the soul of Mother Séraphin rest in peace! for, since she was drowned, we are no longer condemned to eat her ever lasting hash!"
"And for a week past, the governor, instead of giving us a breakfast--"