We are going to the most noted
ordinary of London."
"That is, in common language, an inn, or a tavern," said Nigel.
"An inn, or a tavern, my most green and simple friend!" exclaimed Lord
Dalgarno. "No, no--these are places where greasy citizens take pipe
and pot, where the knavish pettifoggers of the law spunge on their
most unhappy victims--where Templars crack jests as empty as their
nuts, and where small gentry imbibe such thin potations, that they get
dropsies instead of getting drunk. An ordinary is a late-invented
institution, sacred to Bacchus and Comus, where the choicest noble
gallants of the time meet with the first and most ethereal wits of the
age,--where the wine is the very soul of the choicest grape, refined
as the genius of the poet, and ancient and generous as the blood of
the nobles. And then the fare is something beyond your ordinary gross
terrestrial food! Sea and land are ransacked to supply it; and the
invention of six ingenious cooks kept eternally upon the rack to make
their art hold pace with, and if possible enhance, the exquisite
quality of the materials."
"By all which rhapsody," said Lord Glenvarloch, "I can only
understand, as I did before, that we are going to a choice tavern,
where we shall be handsomely entertained, on paying probably as
handsome a reckoning."
"Reckoning!" exclaimed Lord Dalgarno in the same tone as before,
"perish the peasantly phrase! What profanation! Monsieur le Chevalier
de Beaujeu, pink of Paris and flower of Gascony--he who can tell the
age of his wine by the bare smell, who distils his sauces in an
alembic by the aid of Lully's philosophy--who carves with such
exquisite precision, that he gives to noble, knight and squire, the
portion of the pheasant which exactly accords with his rank--nay, he
who shall divide a becafico into twelve parts with such scrupulous
exactness, that of twelve guests not one shall have the advantage of
the other in a hair's breadth, or the twentieth part of a drachm, yet
you talk of him and of a reckoning in the same breath! Why, man, he is
the well-known and general referee in all matters affecting the
mysteries of Passage, Hazard, In and In, Penneeck, and Verquire, and
what not--why, Beaujeu is King of the Card-pack, and Duke of the Dice-
box--HE call a reckoning like a green-aproned, red-nosed son of the
vulgar spigot! O, my dearest Nigel, what a word you have spoken, and
of what a person! That you know him not, is your only apology for such
blasphemy; and yet I scarce hold it adequate, for to have been a day
in London and not to know Beaujeu, is a crime of its own kind.
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