There was nothing new in all this. We were as familiar in my day with this reasoning as Ariston. But we were dominated by our institutions, our penal codes, our criminal lawyers, our prisons, and, above all, our amazing doctrines of individual liberty, which vindicated it for the criminal and disregarded it for the workingman. So that the industrious were bound to as enforced labor as the convict all the time, whereas the convict was periodically let loose on the community to idle and to steal.
CHAPTER XX
ON FLAVORS AND FINANCE
Next evening we met at Theodore's restaurant and sat down to a dinner, which reminded me of the best I had ever tasted in Paris.
Theodore himself was a type. Rather short in stature and stout, he had a large head off which was combed thick hair, treated very much as a sculptor would treat hair in a monument. For Theodore took himself very seriously. He believed gastronomy to be one of the fine arts, and that he was its high priest. He would never allow any one to joke about it, and admitted to his restaurant only those who behaved toward him with the respect to which he felt entitled.
He received us at the door with a napkin over his arm, for of this napkin he was as proud as a British peer of his robes; it was the emblem of his art, and as such he bore it proudly. Ariston greeted him and introduced us to him each by name. He bowed at every introduction.
"And now," said Ariston, turning to us, "you have before you the greatest culinary artist in the world."