the lower room led to the cellar. On the second floor were the lodgings of the Hucheloup family. They were reached by a staircase which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance only a private door in the large room on the first floor. Under the roof, in two mansard attics, were the nests for the servants. The kitchen shared the ground floor with the taproom.
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
One winter, the rainstorms and the showers had taken a fancy to obliterate the S which terminated the first word, and the G which began the third; this is what remained:—
Carpe ho ras
Time and rain assisting, a humble gastronomical announcement had become a profound piece of advice.
In this way it came about, that though he knew no French, Father Hucheloup understood Latin, that he had evoked philosophy from his kitchen, and that, desirous simply of effacing Lent, he had equalled Horace. And the striking thing about it was, that that also meant: “Enter my wine-shop.”