“Pray the good God,” she said, “that it is not all a jeu de l’oie”—and at that moment we heard De Lâge feebly mounting the stairway.
He entered the room and accosted me with a sort of sly courtesy that greatly confounded me. Associations connected with my reappearance, perhaps, had kindled the slow fuse of his memory; but the flame would burn fitfully and in a wrong direction; and, indeed, I think the shock of his loss (of the tankards) had quite unhinged his mind.
“Shall we fall to?” he said. “This is not Paris; yet our good country Grisels can canvass the favour of a hungry man.”
He gave a ridiculous little laugh.
“And what have we here, girl?” he said.
“M’sieu’, it is a pasty of young partridges.”
His palate was not dulled with his wits. It foretasted the delicacy and his eyes moistened. He lingered regretfully over the wedge he cut for me.
“Be generous, monsieur,” he cried, with an enjoying chuckle, “and own that you have been served none better at Véry’s. Oh, but I know my Paris! I was there so late as September of last year, and again, on business connected with my estate, during the month of the king’s trial.”
He blenched over some sudden half-memory; but the sight of Georgette carrying my platter to me restored him to the business of the table.
“I know my Paris!” he cried again. “I have taken kidneys with champagne at La Rapée’s; sheep’s feet at la Buvette du Palais; oysters at Rocher de Cançale. Ho-ho! but does monsieur know the Rocher?”