HOW TO MAKE ALMOND TARTS.
Beat up to foam, discarding dregs,
Your choice of eggs.
Add carefully into the foam
Some citron juice that's new and stout;
Then lengthen out
With milk of almonds made at home.
Next, coat with dough, both fresh and sound,
Below, around,
Such moulds as pastry-cooks prepare.
Add sweetening to suit your taste
Into the paste.
Then pour quite slowly and with care
Your foam into each well[14], so well
That ev'ry well,
When it is baked to blondness, starts
To seek the walks that pleasure sings.
These seemly things
Are rightly christened: almond tarts.
THE POETS (mouths full).
Most exquisite! Divine!
ONE OF THE POETS (choking).
Humph!
(They go to the rear, still eating. Cyrano, who has been watching them, goes up to Ragueneau.)
CYRANO.
They seem to drink your verse, my friend; but see you not
How they assimilate your stock of eatables?
RAGUENEAU (in low tone, smiling).