“Bohemian pheasant, too,—come, come, this is too bad! Be frank and confess; how often has that one speckled tail done duty on a capon of your own raising?”
“Gracious Herr!” muttered he, “do not crush us altogether.”
I don't think that he said this in actual words, but his terrified eyes and his shaking cheeks declared it.
“Never mind,” said I, encouragingly, “it will not hurt us to make a sparing meal occasionally; with the venison and steak, the fried salmon, the duck with olives, and the apricot tart, we will satisfy appetite, and persuade ourselves, if we can, that we have fared luxuriously.”
“And the wine, sir?” asked he.
“Ah, there we are difficult. No little Baden vintage, no small wine of the Bergstrasse, can impose upon us! Lieb-frauen-milch, or, if you can guarantee it, Marcobrunner will do; but, mind, no substitutes!”
He laid his hand over his heart and bowed low; and, as he moved away, I said to myself, “What a mesmerism there must be in real money, since, even with the mockery of it, I have made that creature a bond slave.” Brief as was the interval in preparing my meal, it was enough to allow me a very considerable share of reflection, and I found that, do what I would, a certain voice within would whisper, “Where are your fine resolutions now, Potts? Is this the life of reality that you had promised yourself? Are you not at the old work again? Are you not masquerading it once more? Don't you know well enough that all this pretension of yours is bad money, and that at the first ring of it on the counter you will be found out?”
“This you may rely on, gracious sir,” said the waiter, as he laid a bottle on the table beside me with a careful hand. “It is the orange seal;” and he then added, in a whisper, “taken from the Margrave's cellar in the revolution of '93, and every flask of it worth a province.”
“We shall see—we shall see,” said I, haughtily; “serve the soup!”
If I had been Belshazzar, I believe I should have eaten very heartily, and drunk my wine with a great relish, notwithstanding that drawn sword. I don't know how it is, but if I can only see the smallest bit of terra firma between myself and the edge of a precipice, I feel as though I had a whole vast prairie to range over. For the life of me I cannot realize anything that may, or may not, befall me remotely. “Blue are the hills far off,” says the adage; and on the converse of the maxim do I aver, that faint are all dangers that are distant. An immediate peril overwhelms me; but I could look forward to a shipwreck this day fortnight with a fortitude truly heroic.