Seating himself he turned to the waiter, a man short and stout, completely bald, with large dyed whiskers and an air of repressed satisfaction.
“Listen, Léopold, and note well what I say. To begin with do not attempt to tell me what you wish me to eat. You have heard? Good! Listen again. A dozen Ostendes, an omelette, a pear. Nothing else. Not a crumb. Yes, some Eau de Vals. Allez!”
Léopold bowed. “Perfectly, monsieur le baron. I shall have the honour of serving monsieur le baron with what he has been good enough to be willing to desire.”
Again the waiter bowed. But behind the oleaginousness of his speech a severity had entered, one which intimated that in this preserve of gastronomics such an order was unworthy.
“These gentlemen?” he added, his eyes moving from Verplank to Silverstairs. “Some coffee? A liqueur?”
But now, in fluent French, Verplank was addressing de Fresnoy. “Silverstairs and I have been having an argument. In your quality of Parisian, will you tell us whether a man can have another out for looking impertinently at him?”
De Fresnoy adjusted his collar, patted his neck-cloth. “But certainly, most assuredly. To look impertinently at a man constitutes an attack on his self esteem, which in itself is an integral part of his moral wealth. To omit to return a man’s bow, to neglect to take his proffered hand, to regard him in an offensive manner, are one and all so many assaults on his dignity.”
Verplank, pleased with this view of things, smiled. “Thanks. Mine has been assailed and I was in doubt how to rebuke the aggressor.”
“It is simple as Good day. You have only to select two representatives and get them to put themselves in communication with him. If then he refuses to have friends of his meet yours, or if, afterward, he will neither apologise or fight, he is outlawed.”
De Fresnoy, as he spoke, made a gesture, a wide movement of the arm which indicated, or was intended to indicate, the uttermost limits of the world.