Father Hucheloup had, possibly, been born a chemist, but the fact is that he was a cook; people did not confine themselves to drinking alone in his wine-shop, they also ate there. Hucheloup had invented a capital thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house, stuffed carps, which he called carpes au gras . These were eaten by the light of a tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI , on tables to which were nailed waxed cloths in lieu of tablecloths. People came thither from a distance. Hucheloup, one fine morning, had seen fit to notify passersby of this “specialty;” he had dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and as he was an orthographer on his own account, as well as a cook after his own fashion, he had improvised on his wall this remarkable inscription:⁠—

Carpes ho gras