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THE WORKS
OF
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(LORD LYTTON)
NIGHT AND MORNING
Book III
CHAPTER I.
"The knight of arts and industry,
And his achievements fair."
THOMSON'S Castle of Indolence: Explanatory Verse to Canto II.
In a popular and respectable, but not very fashionable quartier in Paris,and in the tolerably broad and effective locale of the Rue ——, theremight be seen, at the time I now treat of, a curious-looking building,that jutted out semicircularly from the neighbouring shops, with plasterpilasters and compo ornaments. The virtuosi of the quartier haddiscovered that the building was constructed in imitation of an ancienttemple in Rome; this erection, then fresh and new, reached only to theentresol. The pilasters were painted light green and gilded in thecornices, while, surmounting the architrave, were three little statues—one held a torch, another a bow, and a third a bag; they were thereforerumoured, I know not with what justice, to be the artisticalrepresentatives of Hymen, Cupid and Fortune.
On the door was neatly engraved, on a brass plate, the followinginscription:
"MONSIEUR LOVE, ANGLAIS, A L'ENTRESOL."
And if you had crossed the threshold and mounted the stairs, and gainedthat mysterious story inhabited by Monsieur Love, you would have seen,upon another door to the right, another epigraph, informing thoseinterested in the inquiry that the bureau, of M. Love was open daily fromnine in the morning to four in the afternoon.
The office of M. Love—for office it was, and of a nature notunfrequently designated in the "petites affiches" of Paris—had beenestablished about six months; and whether it was the popularity of theprofession, or the shape of the shop, or the manners of M. Love himself,I cannot pretend to say, but certain it is that the Temple of Hymen—asM. Love classically termed it—had become exceedingly in vogue in theFaubourg St.—. It was rumoured that no less than nine marriages in theimmediate neighbourhood had been manufactured at this fortunate office,and that they had all turned out happily except one, in which the bridebeing sixty, and the bridegroom twenty-four, there had been rumours ofdomestic dissension; but as the lady had been delivered,—I mean of herhusband, who had drowned himself in the Seine, about a month after theceremony, things had turned out in the long run better than might havebeen expected, and the widow was so little discouraged; that she had beenseen to enter the office already—a circumstance that was greatly to thecredit of Mr. Love.
Perhaps the secret of Mr. Love's success, and of the marked superiorityof his establishment in rank and popularity over similar ones, consistedin the spirit and liberality with which the business was conducted. Heseemed resolved to destroy all formality between parties who might desireto draw closer to each other, and he hit upon the lucky device of atable d'hote,