"Ah, bon soir, M'sieu. Tout va toujours bien?—et Madame?—et le petit?"
He leads you into the restaurant and finds a table for you. The important matter of the dinner is settled, and then, if you are of the favoured, Frederic will talk to you of his art, and you will hear of refinements and subtleties of cookery which will make you smile until Frederic has proved to you that they are not poetic fancy but substantial fact. Your quail, for example, must be cooked before a grape-vine fire. Nothing but grape-vine will do the trick. Frederic is very positive on that point, and if you are skeptic, he may perhaps take you out and show you the grape-vine fire. Afterward you eat the quail and skepticism melts away into unquestioning faith.
That is only one of the mysteries of Frederic's cuisine. The man loves his art, goes to all lengths to achieve the results he desires, would rather invent a successful sauce than inherit a million, is as proud of his canneton à la presse as is a painter or poet of his masterpiece. On the whole, a majority of the public would probably prefer the masterpiece of Frederic to that of the poet or the painter, and in the chef's own mind there would be no doubt as to the comparative excellence of poem, picture, and duck.
It takes three ducks to supply one duck to a patron at Frederic's. The two extra birds give up their juices for the sauce that is served with the bird—that wonderful sauce which Frederic makes himself in the double brazier or chafing-dish which he sets on a side table near the diner.
It is a treat to watch the making of that sauce, from the moment when, after touching a match to the first brazier burner, Monsieur daintily takes up some of the flame between his forefinger and thumb and deposits it upon the other burner, to the final moment when with an air of triumph the artist announces his complete success.
It is a treat too to see Frederic come and serve the duck. You are not getting your money's worth if he does not do it himself.
And it is a treat, beyond the telling, to eat the duck and the sauce which le Roi des Canards has prepared.
Small wonder that there are smart folk mingled with the marchands des vins at the Tour d'Argent nowadays, and that the birds of passage flitting through Paris go to Frederic's for a dinner or a luncheon.
Marguery is another of the chefs of the old French school, but he has become business man rather than chef, as have most of the restaurateurs of Paris. Only Frederic devotes himself passionately to his art, lives for his cuisine, burns his grape-vine fires, and makes a religious rite of preparing his sauces.
He is not only Roi des Canards, but the last of a royal line.