“There was still a cab fare in Paul’s pocket when he awoke and dressed in the morning, and he booked away to the publisher’s office and received his cheque. Then away to the bank, and away from the bank with fifteen ten-pound notes of the Bank of England. Then a breakfast at a restaurant, and a pint of champagne to drink his own health in--the first wine tasted for nearly five years. Next to ‘my uncle’s’ to redeem the dressing-bag and the dress-suit, and next home to stagger the landlord with that pile of wealth. Then to pack, singing; to drive back to town; to lunch late after the purchase of a suit of reach-me-downs, new hat, boots, gloves, and paletot; and last, away to the Continental train for a first look at Paris. And all the while it was richly comic to himself to feel how he exulted, and to say within doors demurely to the shopman, to the waiter, the ticket clerk, the porter: ‘I am an author, sir, an accepted author, with the first fruits of my first book in my pocket I am on the way to Paris and distinction.’ The four years of lost prospect and horizon looked nothing, less than nothing. But the Channel waters were rough, and he was chilled by the solemn gentlemen who sat battened down with basins in their laps, turning green and yellow in the sickly light; and the railway journey beyond was cold and uncomfortable, and Paris in the gray fog of a late October morning was less gay than he had expected. What little he knew of the language seemed to be recognised by the natives of the land, but what they had to say to him was as rapid as the clatter of a running boy’s hoop-stick on a row of railings, and as intelligible. An English-speaking tout seized him, and he was grateful to be decoyed into a dirty hotel on the other side of the river, where people understood him more or less when he asked a question. Here he entered himself in the guest-book, and under the head of ‘Profession ‘wrote the world ‘Literature ‘with great pride. He ate his cutlets and chipped potatoes at breakfast with an unwonted relish, in spite of a revolting table-cloth, encrusted with mustard and spilt sauces, and blue with wine-stains, over which salt had been spilled to restore the whiteness of the fabric in case it should ever have the good chance to be washed. The yard of bread was a novelty. The distempered houses opposite--pink and green and blue--were novelties. The jalousied windows gave the street a delicious foreign look. The little cavalry officer who came clanking in with his baggy trousers and his spurs and dangling sword, almost as long as its wearer, was a delight. Paul went to the window to look at the middle-aged _bonne_ who went by in her Alsatian cap and flying coloured ribbons.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Prepare some oysters, as shown in No. 54, and when poured upon the toast in their dish, strew all over their surface equal quantities of bread raspings and grated cheese; hold a red-hot shovel over the top until it becomes slightly coloured, and eat this little delicacy while hot.
Sources: The passage is from David Christie Murray, Despair's Last Journey, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Francatelli, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes of 1852, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — ochre cloth, grapes stamp.