"Excessively true," said I; "what shall we order?"
"D'abord des huitres d'Ostende," said Vincent; "as to the rest," taking hold of the carte, "deliberare utilia mora utilissima est."
We were soon engaged in all the pleasures and pains of a dinner.
"Petimus," said Lord Vincent, helping himself to some poulet a l'Austerlitz, "petimus bene vivere—quod petis, hic est?"
We were not, however, assured of that fact at the termination of dinner. If half the dishes were well conceived and better executed, the other half were proportionably bad. Very is, indeed, no longer the prince of Restaurateurs. The low English who have flocked there, have entirely ruined the place. What waiter—what cook can possibly respect men who take no soup, and begin with a roti; who know neither what is good nor what is bad; who eat rognons at dinner instead of at breakfast, and fall into raptures over sauce Robert and pieds de cochon; who cannot tell, at the first taste, whether the beaune is premiere qualite, or the fricassee made of yesterday's chicken; who suffer in the stomach after champignon, and die with indigestion of a truffle? O! English people, English people! why can you not stay and perish of apoplexy and Yorkshire pudding at home?
By the time we had drank our coffee it was considerably past nine o'clock, and Vincent had business at the ambassador's before ten; we therefore parted for the night.
"What do you think of Very's?" said I, as we were at the door.
"Why," replied Vincent, "when I recal the astonishing heat of the place, which has almost sent me to sleep; the exceeding number of times in which that becasse had been re-roasted, and the extortionate length of our bills, I say of Very's, what Hamlet said of the world, 'Weary, stale, and unprofitable!'"
CHAPTER XIII.
I would fight with broad swords, and sink point on the first blood drawn like a gentleman's.—The Chronicles of the Canongate.