1828 Les Miserables
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 tap-room.
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 tal-
low candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI., on tables
to which were nailed waxed cloths in lieu of table-cloths.
People came thither from a distance. Hucheloup, one fine
morning, had seen fit to notify passers-by of this ‘special-
ty”; 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 rain-storms 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 an-