Such a bird as it was!—a very sarcophagus of truffles—a mine of delicious dainties of every clime and cuisine.
“Good—eh?”
“Delicious!” said the second Captain, filling a bumper, and handing it to the host, while he clinked his own against it in friendly guise.
“A pleasant fellow, truly,” said the host, “and a social—but, Lord, how he eats! There go the wings and the back! Himmel und Erde! if he isn’t at the pasty now!”
“Wine!” cried the Frenchman, striking the table with the empty bottle, “Wine.”
The host crossed himself, and went out in search of more liquor, muttering as he shuffled along, “What would have become of me, if I hadn’t paid the indemnity!”
The third Captain was at his post before the host got back, and whatever the performance of his predecessors, it was nothing to his. The pasty disappeared like magic, the fricandeau seemed to have melted away like snow before the sun; while he drank, indiscriminately, Hock, Hermitage, and Bordeaux, as though he were a camel, victualling himself for a three weeks’ tramp in the desert.
The poor host now walked round the board, and surveyed the “débris” of the feast, with a sad heart. Of all the joints which he hoped to have seen cold on the shelves of his larder, some ruined fragments alone remained. Here was the gable end of a turkey—there, the side wall of a sirloin; on one side, the broken roof of a pasty; on the other, the bare joists of a rib of beef. It was the Palmyra of things eatable, and a sad and melancholy sight to gaze on.