I command the coffee, and have my French money all ready in an
outside-pocket, so that there shall be no unnecessary delay. All
station-feeding is a fearsome pastime. You are never quite sure
of the trains, and you never quite trust the waiter's most solemn
asseveration to the effect that you have still so many minutes left,
decreasing rapidly from fifteen to five, when, time being up and the
food down, you find yourself hurrying out on to the platform, plunging
recklessly in between the lines, uncertain as to your carriage, and
becoming more and more hot, nervous, and uncomfortable up to the very
last moment, when the stout guard, with the heavy black moustache,
and the familiar bronzed features set off by a cap-band which once was
red, bundles you into your proper place, bangs the door, and you are
off,--for Paris, or wherever your destination may be.

DAUBINET knows the proprietor of the restaurant, likewise the
proprietor's good lady and good children. He has a great deal to
say to them, always by means of working the semaphore with his arms
and hands, as if the persons with whom he excitedly converses were
deaf; and having lost all count of time, besides being in a state
of considerable puzzle as to the existence of his appetite, he is
suddenly informed by the head-waiter,--another of his acquaintances,
for DAUBINET, it appears, is a constant traveller to and fro on this
route, that if he wants, any thing he must take it at once, or he
won't get it at all, unless he chooses to stop there and lose his
train. So DAUBINET ladles some soup into his mouth, and savagely
worries a huge lump of bread: then having gobbled up the soup in a
quarter of a second, and having put away all the bread in another
quarter, he pours a glass of wine into a tumbler out of the bottle
which I have had opened for both of us, adds water, then tosses it
off, wipes his lips with the napkin which he bangs down on the table,