All the same, one does not immediately get used to horse. _Cheval_, in some form or other, is served out every dinner. There's not nearly so much beef as horse consumed. The French like it better. The sign of a golden horse's head surmounts the doorway of most butcher's shops; many a shop displays the severed head, as the English do those of sheep and pigs. The Parisian taxi-cabs are ousting the horse-cabs fast. Proprietors are selling off their beasts. The newspapers, announcing the result of the sales, will tell you most of the horses went to butchers, as a matter of course. In the medley of French on the menu-card (which you don't scan very closely) you miss _cheval_ until it's pointed out to you: it's disguised. You then discover you've been eating horse for weeks, unwittingly, and enjoying it. It's too late to turn back, even if you didn't like the beast. So you continue to eat and relish the faithful defunct friend to man. Dinner begins about nine. That's the meal for which people who don't live at the hotel "drop in"--people from the suburbs and the country: wounded and base-Colonels, with their wives and daughters; music-hall artistes, business-men. The place hums and echoes with high-spirited chatter. Much wine gets drunk--as much by the women as by the men. At the end of an hour the place is fairly agog. The proprietor himself, dressed in his best--as though persisting in the time-honoured practice of a tavern-host--carves an enormous joint (a kind of half a pony) in the centre of the room, under the apex of the dome. This is very interesting. Only one thing is awry: the women eat greedily. The prettiest of them (and whether they take wine or not) masticate with a primitive eagerness and _abandon_ that is disgusting. The late-sitters remain until eleven over their wine and cigarettes, and then adjourn to the courtyard and sit and call for coffee and liqueurs. If they move before midnight, it's unusual. The courtyard resounds until the small-hours have crept on. And in those hours the maids on duty are busy enough answering the call of the chamber-bells with drinks. You will see them hurrying up and down the lighted staircases and in and out the rooms of the brilliantly lit front, muttering (one imagines) the complaint of the frogs: "It may be sport to you, but it's death to us!" But they never let you think so: at two in the morning they will smile and rap out repartee with a good-humour that it's hard to believe feigned. And who's to say that it is? These people are unfeignedly light-hearted. They satirise us for our moods and our livers; and tell us (not without justice) we don't know how to live. By comparison, we're not happy unless we're miserable.... You will catch the youngsters in the courtyard only by dining at six. You can play with them an hour in the twilight after, and that's a joy not to be lost, recur as often as it may. You can talk their language, even if you can't talk French. CHAPTER III