The Grey Cloak - Page 35/256

In that day there was situate in the Rue du Palais, south of the

harbor, an inn which was the delight of all those mariners whose

palates were still unimpaired by the brine of the seven seas, and whose

purses spoke well of the hazards of chance. Erected at the time when

Henri II and Diane de Poitiers turned the sober city into one of

licentious dalliance, it had cheered the wayfarer during four

generations. It was three stories high, constructed of stone, gabled

and balconied, with a roof which resembled an assortment of fanciful

noses. Here and there the brown walls were lightened by patches of

plaster and sea-cobble; for though the buildings in the Rue du Palais

had stood in the shelter of the walls and fortifications, few had been

exempt from Monseigneur the Cardinal's iron compliments to the

Huguenots.

Swinging on an iron bar which projected from the porticoed entrance,

and supported by two grimacing cherubs, once daintily pink, but now

verging on rubicundity, a change due either to the vicissitudes of the

weather or to the close proximity to the wine-cellars,--was a horn of

plenty, the pristine glory of which had also departed. This invitation

often excited the stranger's laughter; but the Rochellais themselves

never laughed at it, for to them it represented a familiar object,

which, however incongruous or ridiculous, is always dear to the human

heart. At night a green lantern was attached to the horn. At the left

of the building was a walled court pierced by a gate which gave

entrance to the stables. For not only the jolly mariners found

pleasure at the Corne d'Abondance. The wild bloods of the town came

thither to riot and play, to junket and carouse. The inn had seen many

a mad night, and on the stone flooring lay written many an invisible

epitaph.

The host himself was a man of note, one Jean le Borgne, whose cousin

was the agent of D'Aunay in the Tour-D'Aunay quarrel over Acadia in New

France. He had purchased the inn during the year '29, and since that

time it had become the most popular in the city; and as a result of his

enterprise, the Pomme de Pin, in the shadow of the one remaining city

gate, Porte de la Grosse-Horloge, had lost the patronage of the

nobility. Maître le Borgne recognized the importance of catering more

to the jaded palate than to the palate in normal condition; hence, his

popularity. In truth, he had the most delectable vintages outside the

governor's cellars; they came from Bordeaux, Anjou, Burgundy,

Champagne, and Sicily. His cook was an excommunicated monk from

Touraine, a province, according to the merry Vicar of Meudon, in which

cooks, like poets, were born, not bred. His spits for turning a fat

goose or capon were unrivaled even in Paris, whither his fame had gone

through a speech of the Duc de Rohan, who said, shortly after the

siege, that if ever he gained the good graces of Louis, he would come

back for that monk.