“I pledge you, with all my soul,” said I, filling my glass to the brim.
“What a pity,” rejoined Guloseton, “that Ude, whose practical science was so perfect, should ever have written, or suffered others to write, the work published under his name; true it is that the opening part which you have so feelingly recited, is composed with a grace, a charm beyond the reach of art; but the instructions are vapid, and frequently so erroneous, as to make me suspect their authenticity; but, after all, cooking is not capable of becoming a written science—it is the philosophy of practice!”
“Ah! by Lucullus,” exclaimed I, interrupting my host, “what a visionary bechamelle! Oh, the inimitable sauce; these chickens are indeed worthy of the honour of being dressed. Never, my lord, as long as you live, eat a chicken in the country; excuse a pun, you will have foul fare.”
“‘J’ai toujours redoute la volaille perfide, Qui brave les efforts d’une dent intrepide; Souvent par un ami, dans ses champs entraine. J’ai reconnu le soir le coq infortune Qui m’avait le matin a l’aurore naissante Reveille brusquement de sa voix glapissante; Je l’avais admire dans le sein de la cour, Avec des yeux jaloux, j’avais vu son amour. Helas! la malheureux, abjurant sa tendresse, Exercait a souper sa fureur vengeresse.’
“Pardon the prolixity of my quotation for the sake of its value.”
“I do, I do,” answered Guloseton, laughing at the humour of the lines: till, suddenly checking himself, he said, “we must be grave, Mr. Pelham, it will never do to laugh. What would become of our digestions?”
“True,” said I, relapsing into seriousness; “and if you will allow me one more quotation, you will see what my author adds with regard to any abrupt interruption.
“‘Defendez que personne au milieu d’un banquet, Ne vous vienne donner un avis indiscret, Ecartez ce facheux qui vers vous s’achemine, Rien ne doit deranger l’honnete homme qui dine.”
“Admirable advice,” said Guloseton, toying with a filet mignon de poulet. “Do you remember an example in the Bailly of Suffren, who, being in India, was waited upon by a deputation of natives while he was at dinner. ‘Tell them,’ said he, ‘that the Christian religion peremptorily forbids every Christian, while at table, to occupy himself with any earthly subject, except the function of eating.’ The deputation retired in the profoundest respect at the exceeding devotion of the French general.”
“Well,” said I, after we had chuckled gravely and quietly, with the care of our digestion before us, for a few minutes—“well, however good the invention was, the idea is not entirely new, for the Greeks esteemed eating and drinking plentifully, a sort of offering to the gods; and Aristotle explains the very word, Thoinai, or feasts, by an etymological exposition, ‘that it was thought a duty to the gods to be drunk;’ no bad idea of our classical patterns of antiquity. Polypheme, too, in the Cyclops of Euripides, no doubt a very sound theologian, says, his stomach is his only deity; and Xenophon tells us, that as the Athenians exceeded all other people in the number of their gods, so they exceeded them also in the number of their feasts. May I send your lordship an ortolan?”