Looking down the list of entrées to find something sufficiently bizarre in taste to match the commencement of my dinner, I hesitated over a _pilaff_, which would have cost me 8d., almost plumped for a _râble de lièvre_, which meant an outlay of 1s., and then, remembering that it was Christmas-time, as near as possible ordered a _boudin_, which is the sausage that all good Frenchmen eat once a year at the _réveillon_ suppers on Christmas Eve. But I remembered the nightmare that followed the last _réveillon_ supper to which I went in Paris, and, passing over all the entrées, ordered nothing more exciting than a wing of chicken, 1s., and a _salade chicorée_. A _crème chocolat_, 4d., was my _entremet_. The onion soup proved to be excellent--quite strong and quite oniony, which, as I was not going into polite society that evening, could offend no one. The mussels quite justified M. Gustave's eulogium, but as I did not eat the whole bowlful, and left some of the savoury liquid, M. Gustave, with an expression of concern on his face, came to my table to ask whether I had found any fault with the dish. I assured him that my appetite, not the mussels or the cook, was alone to blame. The wing of the chicken was plump and tender, and had I paid half-a-crown it could not have been better. The _crème chocolat_ certainly tasted of chocolate, if the cream was not a very pronounced feature in it. It was a very excellent meal--at the price--and had I carried out the starvation and strong exercise and vivid imagination preparation that I have so strongly recommended to you, instead of lounging out to tea in the afternoon with a pretty lady and eating tea cake and sugary things at five o'clock, I should have recorded all the beautiful things about the little restaurant that I hear in the travel stories. XXXIV A SUPPER TRAIN One day last year I ate two meals under roofs owned by the Great Eastern Railway Company. I lunched in the dining-room of the Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street, a splendid, airy room, light grey and gold, with brown Scagliola marble columns. The tables in this dining-room are set a good distance apart, rather a rare luxury in the City, where space is very limited; one is not forced to overhear the conversation of the people dining at other tables, and waiters do not kick one's chair every time they pass. The people lunching seemed to be a happy blend of visitors staying in the hotel and City men who had come in from their offices, but there was none of that breathless hurry-scurry that I always associate with a lunch in the City.