I always go at the same hour and shave him myself; and don't I
tremble! The cook would forfeit the annuity of a thousand crowns that
he is to come into after my lord's death, if breakfast is not served
_inconciliably_ at ten o'clock precisely. The menus are drawn up for the
whole year round, day after day. My Lord the Marquis has not a thing
to wish for. He has strawberries whenever there are any, and he has
the earliest mackerel to be had in Paris. The programme is printed
every morning. He knows his dinner by rote. In the next place, he
dresses himself at the same hour, in the same clothes, the same linen,
that I always put on the same chair, you understand? I have to see
that he always has the same cloth; and if it should happen that his
coat came to grief (a mere supposition), I should have to replace it
by another without saying a word about it to him. If it is fine, I go
in and say to my master:
"'You ought to go out, sir.'
"He says Yes, or No. If he has a notion that he will go out, he
doesn't wait for his horses; they are always ready harnessed; the
coachman stops there _inconciliably_, whip in hand, just as you see him
out there. In the evening, after dinner, my master goes one day to the
Opera, the other to the Ital----no, he hasn't yet gone to the
Italiens, though, for I could not find a box for him until yesterday.
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