"The Fruit Bearers"
The supper provided by the ingenious Rambouillet was quite beyond parallel. Never had he created a more exquisite menu. The consomme impromptu alone would have been sufficient to establish the immortal reputation of any chef. What, then, can I say of the Dorade bouillie sauce maréchale, the ragoût aux langues de carpes, the ramereaux à la charnière, the ciboulette de gibier à l'espagnole, the paté de cuisses d'oie aux pois de Monsalvie, the queues d'agneau au clair de lune, the artichauts à la grecque, the charlotte de pommes à la Lucy Waters, the bombes à la marée, and the glaces aux rayons d'or? A veritable tour de cuisine that surpassed even the famous little suppers given by the Marquis de Réchale at Passy, and which the Abbé Mirliton pronounced "impeccable, and too good to be eaten."
Ah! Pierre Antoine Berquin de Rambouillet; you are worthy of your divine mistress!
Mere hunger quickly gave place to those finer instincts of the pure gourmet, and the strange wines, cooled in buckets of snow, unloosed all the decollete spirits of astonishing conversation and atrocious laughter.
As the courses advanced, the conversation grew bustling and more personal. Pulex and Cyril, and Marisca and Cathelin, opened a fire of raillery, and a thousand amatory follies of the day were discussed.
From harsh and shrill and clamant, the voices grew blurred and inarticulate. Bad sentences were helped out by worse gestures, and at one table Scabius expressed himself like the famous old knight in the first part of the "Soldier's Fortune" of Otway. Bassalissa and Lysistrata tried to pronounce each other's names, and became very affectionate in the attempt; and Tala, the tragedian, robed in roomy purple, and wearing plume and buskin, rose to his feet, and, with swaying gestures, began to recite one of his favourite parts. He got no further than the first line, but repeated it again and again, with fresh accents and intonations each time, and was only silenced by the approach of the asparagus that was being served by satyrs dressed in white.
[CHAPTER IV]
It is always delightful to wake up in a new bedroom. The fresh wall-paper, the strange pictures, the positions of doors and windows, imperfectly grasped the night before, are revealed with all the charm of surprise when we open our eyes the next morning.