He would have no further commerce with me after this; and, doubtlessly thinking that an Englishman who couldn’t eat his beef under-done or indeed at all, and preferred the Presse to the Times newspaper, was an outcast and a renegade, abandoned me to my evil devices, and contented himself with crying “Voila!” from the murky distance without coming when I called. He even declined to attend to receive payment, and handed me over for that purpose to a long French boy in a blouse, whose feet had evidently not long been emancipated from the pastoral sabots, whose hair was cropped close to his head (in the manner suggesting county gaol at home, and ignorance of small toothcombs abroad), and who had quite a flux of French words, and tried to persuade me to eat civet de lièvre that was to be served up at half-past seven of the clock. But I would have borne half a hundred disappointments similar to this dinner for the sake of the black man. Legs and feet! he was a character! He sat opposite to me, calm, contented, magnificent, proud. He was as black as my boot, and as shiny. His woolly head, crisped by our bounteous mother Nature, had unmistakeably received a recent touch of the barber’s tongs. He was perfumed; he was oiled; he had moustaches (as I live!) twisted out into long rats’-tails by means of pommade Hongroise. He had a tip. He had a scarlet Turkish cap with a long blue tassel. He had military stripes down his pantaloons. He had patent leather boots. He had shirt-studs of large circumference, pins, gold waistcoat-buttons, and a gorgeous watch-chain. I believe he had a crimson under-waistcoat. He had the whitest of cambric handkerchiefs, a ring on his forefinger, and a stick with an overpowering gold knob. He was the wonderfullest nigger that the eye ever beheld. He had a pretty little English wife--it is a fact, madam--with long auburn ringlets, who it was plain to see was desperately in love with, and desperately afraid of, him. It was marvellous to behold the rapt, fond gaze with which she contemplated him as he leaned back in his chair after dinner, and refreshed his glistening ivories with a toothpick. Equally marvellous was the condescension with which he permitted her to eat her dinner in his august presence, and suffered her to tie round his neck a great emblazoned shawl like a flag. Who could he have been? The father of the African twins; the Black Malibran’s brother; Baron Pompey; Prince Mousalakatzic of the Orange River; Prince Bobo; some other sable dignitary of the empire of Hayti; or the renowned Soulouque himself, incognito? Yet, though affable to his spouse, he was a fierce man to the waiter. The old blood of Ashantee, the ancient lineage of Dahomey, could ill brook the shortcomings of that cadaverous servitor. There was an item in the reckoning that displeased him. “Wass this sa?” he cried, in a terrible voice; “wass this, sa? Fesh your mas’r, sa!” The waiter cringed and fled, and I laughed.