A DISTINGUISHED FRENCHMAN.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume II, Issue 73, 9 January 1864, Page 1 (Supplement)

A DISTINGUISHED FRENCHMAN.

For the following amusing narrative we are indebted to a French writer: —" When we put our foot on board of the steamers which convey the traveller from Suez to India, we find ourselves on the English soil. British society is represented there in its entireness, with its prejudices, with its divisions as distinct as those of the Hindoo castes. On one side is the aristocracy of rank and fortune, enjoying the first-class places, the choicest luxuries, all the refinements of the most magnificent existence ; on the other are the poor fellows who, not being able to pay to the steward on board a hundred and sixty francs for every day that the voyage lasts, must resign themselves to take the position of pariahs, and to bear the ineffaceable mark which the adoption of second class places necessitates. Shut up within the narrow limits of the vessel's most uninviting part, they are obliged in silence to undergo all sorts of economical experiences, to sleep beside the furnace, and to live on the food which the domestics belonging to the vessel and to the first-class passengers are too dainty to taste. These exorbitant distinctions —a result of the manners and of the social condition of our neighbors—serve the interests of the steamboat company, while they flatter the vanity and pride of the first-class passengers, who know that they are not destined to see sitting at their banquetting table, or moving in the saloons where daily balls and concerts are held—that which they regard as the most odious thing in the world —poverty. Sometimes, however, these prejudices expose them to terrible disenchantments —to cruel mistakes. To illustrate this assertion, it may suffice, I think, to narrate what occurred whilst I was travelling in India to Lord who had recently been appointed Governor of Madras. On his way to his high post, this

sovereign of twenty* three millions of souls, and of 21,000 square leagues, met at Suez, installed in the most comfortable cabin in the vessel, a Frenchman whose costume, whose language, realised the conventional type of the perfect gentleman. His boots and gloves were irreproachable ; judging from the effect, his razors were in perfect order; his white cravat! and his cambric shirt were superbly spotless. At every repast he had a change of attire, j notable for every characteristic of the most advanced modern taste. If he travelled without servants —if he had inscribed on the register , of the vessel nothing but a simple baptismal name—he had doubtless good reasons for remaining incognito—political reasons, perhaps. And if, judging from the enormous mass of his luggage, he might have been taken for a tra- j veiling bagman, carrying to the East speci- j mens of all the Parisian manufactures, yet his sententious speech, the gravity of his gestures his haughty and somewhat ironical reserve, especially when face to face with the produc-, tions of the purser's kitchen and cellar, were hostile in a moment to a supposition so degrading. Besides, a count's coronet was con- j spicuously stamped on each of his numerous packages. Moreover, he spoke with the great-1 est apparent knowledge of the highest society at London and Paris, of the balls of Lord C., the fetes of Count W , the dinners of Baron R . On all these things he gave such minute details that the listeners were compelled to admit that he must have taken a personal part in those pomps of the grand European world. In addition, some words dropped, as if inadvertently, in conversation, gave the impression that he had been exceedingly intimate with Lord Dalhousie, and that the Go-vernor-General was expecting him at Calcutta. All these circumstances brought together weighed well, and commented on by the anxious curiosity of his travelling companions, induced these, and foremost among them Lord ! H ,to conclude that this mysterious per- j sonage must be a commissioner sent by the i French Government to its establishments in I India, or at the very least the Governor of Chandenagor. This being admitted, the j stranger became naturally the lion of the ves- j sel, the point of admiration, the centre of at-; traction for only the small select society on | board. Everyone sought to converse with him, or to gain his attention. His superiority in all things was incontestably established. Lord H proclaimed him without a rival at whist, would not have any other partner at the game, and esteemed himself happy to see seated on his right haed at dinner a connoissieur who mercilessly rejected into the lowest degrees of the "vinocole hierarchy" wines which were represented as the product of the first vintages. In truth, this Frenchman was plainly a man of universal knowledge and culture. At the concert of the day, and at the moment when Lord H and he were blending together the odorous smoke of their cigars, or comparing their opinions on the men and the affairs of Europe, he was seen approaching in a nonchalant way the performers—to blame a wrong or discordant note, or to approve with a protecting gesture a difficult passage victoriously achieved. To the tea-tray he brought the same magisterial condescension; he did not disdain to give his opinion as to the best composition of the precious beverage, and seemed to know as well as Robert Fortune himself, all the varieties of the aromatic plant. Happy then, the young lady who, charged with the difficult functions of Hebe, succeeded in exchanging for an approving smile, the delicious cup and no less delicious toast which she had prepared for this privileged mortal; for it must be said that, although he had very visibly doubled Cape Forty, he could still be justly regarded as a fine-looking man; and the prevailing belief was that he was a bachelor. Thus, king of fashion, he reigned in the steamer from Suez to Ceylon, where he pleaded an indisposition as a reason for refusing an invitation to dinner which the Governor of the Island had sent him. From Ceylon to Madras, where Lord H pressed him, but in vain, to land, and nearly broke three of the Frenchman's fingers, with so much energy at the hour of separation did he testify his regret and esteem; and, finally, from Madras to Calcutta, where his kind travelling companions learned, to their astonishment, that he, whose ascendancy they had courted, whose ease they had admired, whose demeanor they had applauded, whose suffrages they had sought, was nothing but a skilful Paris cook, whom Lord Dalhousie had carried away for a season from the gastronomers of the west to place at the head of his kitchen.

« One needs to be an Englishman to compre. hend and to divine the confusion of the dupes of this voluntary mystification. On my passage from Calcutta to Madras it was the subject of conversation of all the Europeans. It was talked about, and perhaps is still talked about, with as much oi sadness as of mirth; and I am sure that in India no one but Lord Dalhousie himself laughed heartily at it."— Leader.