"Come on, Humpty-Dumpty! Come on, Humpty-Dumpty!" roared the coachman, choking with rage, while they carried his innocent victim into the adjoining room, where the ladies, young and old, were engaged in bandaging his nose. The excitement was soon allayed, thanks to our arrival, thanks also to the judicious words of M. Barreau, a man of mature years, sedate and majestic, of my own type. He is the Nabob's cook, formerly _chef_ at the Cafe Anglais, and M. Cardailhac, manager of the Nouveautes, secured him for his friend. To see him in his black coat and white cravat, with his handsome, full, clean-shaven face, you would take him for one of the great functionaries of the Empire. To be sure, a cook in a house where the table is set for thirty people every morning, in addition to Madame's table, and where everyone is fed on the best and the extra best, is no ordinary cook-shop artist. He receives a colonel's salary, with board and lodging, and then the perquisites! No one has any idea of what the perquisites amount to in a place like that. So every one addressed him with great respect, with the consideration due to a man of his importance: "Monsieur Barreau" here, "my dear Monsieur Barreau" there. You must not imagine that the servants in a house are all chums and social equals. Nowhere is the hierarchy more strictly observed than among them. For instance, I noticed at M. Noel's party that the coachmen did not fraternize with their grooms, nor the valets de chambre with the footmen and out-riders, any more than the steward and butler mingled with the scullions; and when M. Barreau cracked a little joke, no matter what it was, it was a pleasure to see how amused his underlings seemed to be. I have no fault to find with these things. Quite the contrary. As our dean used to say: "A society without a hierarchy is a house without a stairway." But the fact seemed to me worth noting in these memoirs.