not but that those enterprising brothers
would be ruined hip and thigh.

My vault has many windows; but from
every one of them I have a (to me) pleasant
view. There is the kitchen aspect. The
kitchen is not on the basement, but on a first
floor, on a level with my vault—which, in its
mortuary character, should properly be on
the basement also; but, in this astonishing
land they even have their churches one above
the other in floors: the summer church in
the parlour, the winter church in the garret.
The kitchen's contiguity to me is not near
enough to be olfactorily disagreeable, but
near enough for me (with the aid of an opera-
glass, for I am well nigh as blind as a mole)
to descry from my windows interiors that
would have driven Ostade crazy; bits of
still life whose portrayal would have made
the fortune of Gerard Dow; green-stuffs and
salads whose every leaf Mieris would have
doted on; effects of firelight and daylight
combined, from stewpan-laden furnaces, that
Sckalken would have loved to paint, but
would have failed in reproducing.

The cook—rosy, corpulent, and clad in
gravy-stained white from tasselled nightcap
to flapping slippers—is a German, a free
German—a Hamburg man, who but he. He
fears nor knout, nor pleiti, nor rod, nor stick,
nor Siberian pleasure jaunt. He is a Canterbury
Tale cook to look upon,: portly, jovial,
with a rich, husky, real-turtle-soup-bred
voice, which he ladles from a tureen rather
than from his throat, and which I hear rolling
in rich oily waves through the kitchen as he
lectures his subordinates in bad Russian. He
has many subordinates. One lank, cadaverous
young Teuton, his nephew, who came from
Cassel, and is always whining to go back to
Cassel, and who, from the distaste he gives
me, seeing him putting his fingers into the
sauces so often, I unequivocatingly wish would
go back to Cassel immediately. Two or
three bearded acolytes, in the usual pink
shirts and et-ceteras, who spill more than
they cook, and break more than they spill,
and are not kicked and cuffed for clumsiness,
I think, much more than they deserve. And,
finally, this field-marshal of cooks has a flying
cohort of culinary Amazons, nimble-fingered,
quick-witted girls, with coloured kerchiefs on
their heads, who fly about from point .to
point, baste, stir, stew, fry, dish up, and,
it strikes me, do the major part of the cooking
at the Hôtel Heyde. Of course our chief
cook's directing genius and superintending
eye are everything, as to flavour. I may
here mention a curious example of that laziness
and desire for an easy, abundant-pumpkin
leading life inherent (through slavery,
but to be eradicated by freedom) which you
find in Ivan the moujik and Quashie the
nigger. A peasant once told me, or rather
the gentleman who was interpreting for me,
that of all professions in life he should prefer
that of head-cook in the house of a seigneur;
for, argued he, what have you to do? just dip
your finger in the sauce and lick it, and the
babas (the women) do all the rest. He had
no idea of there being any skill in the world
save that purely manual. Sometimes Heyde' s
chief cook condescends to hold one end of a
napkin for straining asparagus-soup purposes.
Sometimes it will please his cookship to go
through a light-hearted bit of legerdemain
with two stewpans; but his ordinary position
is with his broad back against the dresser,
and his broad face turned towards the chief
furnace, a paper cigarette between his pulpy
lips (he smokes in the kitchen, this bold cook)
and a tall tankard of real Bavarian beer (they
have it real at Heyde's) by his side. Who
expects field-marshals to head armies as well
as direct their movements? Our Wellington,
to be sure, was fond of exposing his life, and
William of Orange was only tolerable and in
good humour when he was in immediate
personal danger. But Napoleon sat in a chair
in the rear of Waterloo's carnage till he
mounted that famous pale horse to fly from
it. Edward the Third witnessed the battle
of Crecy from a windmill, and Louis the
Fifteenth had his wig dressed while his household
troops were charging the English guards.
Our cook looks on, directs, but does not
fight. Who can carry the bâton of marshal
and Brown Bess at the same time?

There is always a prodigious laughing and
screaming, and, if truth must be told—romping
—going on in this kitchen. The chief
cook himself is a gay man, and flings his
handkerchief to one of the kerchiefed
damsels; the girls generally keep up a shrill
clamour of tongues, to which the noise of a
well-stocked poultry-yard, where Cochin-Chinas
in good health and voice are not
wanting, may serve as a comparison. I
am of opinion that the Cassel-sick German
(who is evidently a misanthrope) hits them
occasionally with saucepans, or otherwise
abuses them, for the prattle and laughter
frequently change to sounds unmistakeably
those of invective and auger; and there is
one young lady: very ugly she is (I have her
now under the lens of my opera-glass), who
discourses so loudly on some real or fancied
grievance, with such vehement gesticulation
and such frenzied utterance, that I am
apprehensive, every moment, she will fall down
in a fit. But she does not—apprehensive,
perhaps, that were she to do so, she would
be brought to her senses by the outward
application of melted butter or hot gravy.

This cook, I learn, when I am not in the
solitude of the family vault, is an excellent
artist. If you make him a present of a blue
bill—say five roubles—and order a dinner—
say for self and friends—he will cook you a
repast succulent enough to make a bear leave
off honey; which expression may be taken as
equivalent to our " good enough to make a
cat speak." He has one little fault: this.
After any extra exertion in the culinary line,