THE SALAMANDER. "C'est la véritable salamandre," said Monsieur Albert, the house-agent, pausing before the anthracite stove in the front-room. We regarded it without interest. "Of course there is no bathroom?" said my wife tentatively. Monsieur Albert turned and looked at her with the roguish smile of the conjurer about to produce the rabbit from the hat. "Ah," he replied, "je vais vous faire voir une originalité." He conducted us through the flat to the kitchen, and, throwing open a large cupboard in one of the walls, revealed a really very respectable white-enamelled bath with a geyser. "Voilà, Madame!" This was more than we had dared to hope for. "We will take the appartement," I said at once. "Mais, Monsieur, vous n'avez pas encore vu les autres pièces, les chambres-à-coucher, le "It is enough, Monsieur," I said; "there is a bath." And I led him back to the salle-à-manger. Our business was soon transacted. He handed me an inventory of the furniture and effects; I handed him three months' rent. The flat was ours. on the following morning that we had gave it a trial, but found that total imto wash up before as well as after break-mersion so soon after luncheon was infast. Finally my wife suggested that I imical to the process of digestion. should limit myself to three hot baths Our main problem, however, was the "No SOONER WERE WE ESTABLISHED HERE THAN GENEVIÈVE DESCENDED UPON US." Before taking his leave Monsieur Albert walked across the room and a week, taken at two in the afternoon; laid his hand fondly, lingeringly, on the this, she thought, would give the kitchen polished top of the anthracite stove. time to recover by the evening, if we "La véritable salamandre," he mur-kept a really good fire going there. mured. Then with a sigh he tore himself away and departed. * Looking back to the earlier days of our tenancy of the flat, I am prepared to admit that the bath was a good one. Unfortunately there were difficulties in making use of it, and I had almost immediately to relinquish my original intention of taking a daily hot tub before breakfast. This operation filled the kitchen with steam and Mademoiselle Geneviève, our femme de ménage, who arrived at nine o'clock, with despair. It was, she declared, insupportable that one like herself, with an hereditary tendency to bronchitis, should be made to labour in a fog. A similar drawback attached to bathing at night. Everything in the kitchen was so damp anthracite stove. The trouble with the stove was that it was altogether too thorough-going; there were no half-measures about it. Unless filled to the top it went out; when filled to the top it emitted so intolerable a heat that on the fourth morning we had to take our chairs into the passage leading from the salle-à-manger to the kitchen. No sooner were we established here than Geneviève descended upon us. Was it, she asked, that we mistrusted her that we approached ourselves thus so close to the kitchen? But never of her life had anyone yet accused her of idleness. It was not necessary that we should espy her. We assured her that we had no wish to derange her. She possessed our entire and unabated confidence. She was all, and more than all, that we had ever suspected that a femme de ménage could be. But the stove-who could endure a heat so excessive? At the end of a week I decided that something must be done. Not only was the passage as a sittingout place beginning to pall on us, but relations with Geneviève were becoming so strained that we were daily expecting an ultimatum from her. "Salamander or no salamander," I said, I"véritable or other, the stove must go." "I KNOW,' SHE SAID; 'LET'S PUT IT IN THE BATH." "If we could only get rid of it," said my wife, "it ought to be perfectly easy to put an ordinary grate in the fireplace. There is a groove for the bars to fit into, but they have been taken out. We shall probably find them in the cellar." A search in that quarter proved that her surmise was correct. The question remained what to do with the stove. We did not care to retain it in the salle-à-manger, even under the disguise of an occasional table or an extra sideboard; in either of the two bedrooms it would be equally de trop; if we cast it out of the window the municipal authorities would probably hurl it back at us. We seemed to have reached an impasse when suddenly my wife was seized with an inspiration. The salle-à-manger is now comfortably warmed by a small but bright fire in an open grate, and Geneviève, relieved of our presence in the passage, is all that there is of the most amiable. It is true that I have to a certain extent lost the bath habit, but, as my wife says, while we are in France we may as well try to be as French as possible. There remains in the ointment but a single fly. Sooner or later Monsieur Albert, the house-agent, will pay us another visit. When that day arrives we shall be faced by two alternatives: it will be necessary either to vacate the flat or to murder Monsieur Albert and put him in the bath with the salamander. Nous verrons. THOUGHTS ON THE BUDGET. HE'S NOT FEELING STRONG ENOUGH." I AM one of many, doubtless, whose Easter vacation has been overcast by the vexatious Budget introduced last week. the English April of which the poet sang. In my own home this unsatisfactory Budget has lost me much of my prestige. For many years on Budget morning the family have assembled punctually It offended against both British pre- at the breakfast-table and waited in cedent and my personal disposition. 1 silence for me to arrive and to scan have seen forty Aprils, but never a the summary in The Times newspaper. Budget like this one. If I were the Thereafter they have listened to my sort of man to bother my head about remarks. More than once they have the nicer points of national finance I one and all blenched, and servants have might find something to rouse genuine been known to drop dishes. But 1927 anger. But as an average Englishman will go down in the annals of my houseI find nothing that calls for indigna- hold as a sad exception, when a dismayed tion, nothing that can be said to silence prevailed instead of a steady threaten the downfall of the Empire, utterance of plain English. It was not alas, or to point to a disregard for the pockets and the simple pleasures of the people at large. It is indeed a keen disappointment that the Budget, so-called, leaves me with no sense whatever of being oppressed or ex- was. ploited. that the Budget was above criticism; the trouble was that I could not think of anything to say against it until the meal was long over. That is the rotten sort of Budget it Abbreviation's Artless Aid. From a commercial traveller's report: "I was not able to see Mr. but I had Had the CHANCELLOR OF THE EX- "Colonel Sir Victor Mackenzie, the commanding officer, headed the 2nd Battalion of the Scots Guards in the march to the military railway siding at Aldershot to-day, where they entrained for Southampton and China. The total strength was 26 officers and 88 men." Provincial Paper. Surely the "quarter-bloke" wasn't left times I wonder whether this is indeed behind. Bowler (to unenterprising Balsman). "LOOK 'ERE-I'VE 'AD ENOUGH OF YOU. EITHER YOU 'AS A DIP AT THE NEXT ONE OR YOU GETS A PUNCH ON THE NOSE." THE CLUB. (By a sometime Resident in South India.) THE Club stands up magnificent; there's marble in the hall, And pillar, porch and portico shine radiant as the stars. It hears no little voices call, as palaces should do. smoke [In its recent formal note to China the Soviet Government declares that it will take all means to defend the cause of peace between the peoples."] |