Had the word been in use at that time, we should have said he was eccentric.
I cannot say what deviation from the path every man ought to follow in deciding upon his vocation had driven the Abbé Fortier into the Church. He was born to make a first-rate captain of dragoons, whilst as it was he made a somewhat odd priest. God forbid I should say he made a bad one!
He was a man of five feet eight inches, built like a Hercules, with an erect carriage, his head held high, and he stepped right foot foremost at each stride like a fencing-master in a fencing school; he was, too, one of the finest billiard players, one of the best huntsmen, and one of the greatest eaters I ever saw.
I do not, of course, even dream of comparing the Abbé Fortier with Boudoux in this last respect. The abbé could eat for a long time and a considerable quantity at once: Boudoux's desire to be always eating was a disease.
One day the Abbé Fortier bet a curé of the neighbourhood that he would eat a hundred eggs at his dinner. The hundred eggs were served up according to recipes in the Cuisinière bourgeoise, in twenty different ways.
When they were eaten, he said:
"Good, one ought to play fair and give four extra to the hundred: boil four more eggs—hard."
And he ate the four hard-boiled eggs, after having eaten a hundred cooked in all kinds of ways.
A very curious story is told of his early days. He would be thirty at the time I am referring to, and, as he was sixty-two at the time I am writing about, it must have happened thirty-two years before. He was then only a curate, and one evening he was taking the viaticum to a dying person in the next village.