Penny Blood Serial Cover — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 ALFRED DE ROSANN. to another convict, was a personage of quite a differ- ent character; and as they are both exceedingly ne- cessary to the plan of this tale, we hope the reader will deign to pardon us, if we “ bestow a little more of our tediousness’”? upon him, as Dogberry has.it, and request a moment’s attention to Monsieur Cham- pignon,* ex-restaurateur of the Boulevard du Tem- ple, and in happier times a successful rival of the far- famed Cadran Bleu. Now the Cadran Bleu,as we must inform our British readers who have not been in Paris, and who have never read thenovels of Paul de Kock nor Auguste Ri- carde—but in these days, when the rage for travelling is so universal, few have not visited that gay city of luxury, pleasure and delight—the Cadran Bleu, or Blue Clock, is a famous eating-house, where mer- chants in a small way, the more respectable class. of tradesmen, attorneys’ upper clerks, actors, the gen¢/e- men who work in the government offices of their Excellencies the Ministers, and individuals of that stamp, celebrate weddings, birth-days, holidays, &c. The Cadran Bleu is consequently in great vogue; and it enjoyed, perhaps, even a higher repute in the times when Champignon opened:a similar establishment, which, being in the same neighbourhood, was _insti- tuted with the express determination of rivalling the monopolizing restaurant, Champignon was a short, fat, asthmatic man, with small gray eyes, a pug nose, a wide mouth, and a good set of teeth. His age might be about forty— but his wisdom kept not pace with his years; for he ~ had scarcely two ideas, and those were connected with gastronomy. All his st7z/es were drawn from deli- cious viands——his metaphors bore perpetual reference to wines or liqueurs—and the only flowers of rhetoric he was ever known to garnish his discourse with, were universally founded on fricandeaus, cotelettes a la jardiniere, filet de boeuf saute, &c., &e., &e. * The English of the word Champignon is ‘*Mushroom.’’- Ccommicloooks conn