“Are the ortolans good, padre?” asked Jekyl, while his eye glittered with an intense appreciation of the old canon's hypocrisy.
“They, are delicious! succulent and tender,” said the priest, wiping his lips. “Francesco does them to perfection.”
“You at least believe in a cook,” said Jekyl, but in so low a voice as to escape the other's notice.
“She is sobbing still,” said the canon, in a whisper, and with a gesture towards the curtained doorway. “I like to hear them gulping down their sighs. It is like the glug-glug of a rich flask of 'Lagrime.'”
“But don't you pity them, padre?” asked Jekyl, in mock earnestness.
“Never! never! First of all, they do not suffer in all these outbursts. It is but decanting their feelings into another vessel, and they love it themselves! I have had them for hours together thus in the confessional, and they go away after, so relieved in mind and so light of heart, there 's no believing it.”
“But Nina,” said Jekyl, seriously, “is not one of these.”
“She is a woman,” rejoined the padre, “and it is only a priest can read them.”
“You see human nature as the physician does, padre, always in some aspect of suffering. Of its moods of mirth and levity you know less than we do, who pass more butterfly lives!”
“True in one sense, boy; ours are the stony paths, ours are the weary roads in life! I like that Burgundy.”