In that day there was situate in the Rue du Palais, south of the
harbor, an inn which was the delight of all those mariners whose
palates were still unimpaired by the brine of the seven seas, and whose
purses spoke well of the hazards of chance. Erected at the time when
Henri II and Diane de Poitiers turned the sober city into one of
licentious dalliance, it had cheered the wayfarer during four
generations. It was three stories high, constructed of stone, gabled
and balconied, with a roof which resembled an assortment of fanciful
noses. Here and there the brown walls were lightened by patches of
plaster and sea-cobble; for though the buildings in the Rue du Palais
had stood in the shelter of the walls and fortifications, few had been
exempt from Monseigneur the Cardinal's iron compliments to the
Huguenots.
Swinging on an iron bar which projected from the porticoed entrance,
and supported by two grimacing cherubs, once daintily pink, but now
verging on rubicundity, a change due either to the vicissitudes of the
weather or to the close proximity to the wine-cellars,--was a horn of
plenty, the pristine glory of which had also departed. This invitation
often excited the stranger's laughter; but the Rochellais themselves
never laughed at it, for to them it represented a familiar object,
which, however incongruous or ridiculous, is always dear to the human
heart. At night a green lantern was attached to the horn. At the left
of the building was a walled court pierced by a gate which gave
entrance to the stables. For not only the jolly mariners found
pleasure at the Corne d'Abondance. The wild bloods of the town came
thither to riot and play, to junket and carouse. The inn had seen many
a mad night, and on the stone flooring lay written many an invisible
epitaph.
The host himself was a man of note, one Jean le Borgne, whose cousin
was the agent of D'Aunay in the Tour-D'Aunay quarrel over Acadia in New
France. He had purchased the inn during the year '29, and since that
time it had become the most popular in the city; and as a result of his
enterprise, the Pomme de Pin, in the shadow of the one remaining city
gate, Porte de la Grosse-Horloge, had lost the patronage of the
nobility. Maître le Borgne recognized the importance of catering more
to the jaded palate than to the palate in normal condition; hence, his
popularity. In truth, he had the most delectable vintages outside the
governor's cellars; they came from Bordeaux, Anjou, Burgundy,
Champagne, and Sicily. His cook was an excommunicated monk from
Touraine, a province, according to the merry Vicar of Meudon, in which
cooks, like poets, were born, not bred. His spits for turning a fat
goose or capon were unrivaled even in Paris, whither his fame had gone
through a speech of the Duc de Rohan, who said, shortly after the
siege, that if ever he gained the good graces of Louis, he would come
back for that monk.