"What have you that you can especially recommend this morning?"
The waiter, with that nasal volubility peculiar to his race, rapidly ran over the whole vegetable and animal creation.
Müller listened with polite incredulity.
"Nothing else?" said he, when the other stopped, apparently from want of breath.
"Mais oui, M'sieur!" and, thus stimulated, the waiter, having "exhausted worlds and then imagined new," launched forth into a second and still more impossible catalogue.
Müller turned to me.
"The resources of this establishment, you observe," he said, very gravely, "are inexhaustible. One might have a Roc's egg à la Sindbad for the asking."
The waiter looked puzzled, shuffled his slippered feet, and murmured something about "oeufs sur le plat."
"Unfortunately, however," continued Müller, "we are but men--not fortresses provisioning for a siege. Antoine, mon enfant, we know thee to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent; but we will be content with a vol-au-vent of fish, a bifteck aux pommes frites, an omelette sucrée, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux with the yellow seal. Now vanish!"
The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished accordingly.