"That is a pity," she answered, filling both nostrils. "It is the most delightful habit."
She slipped her snuff-box back into her apron pocket, and went on—
"You are come not a bit too soon. Monseigneur had his second attack yesterday; it was an awful attack, was it not, Monsieur Offenloch?"
"Furious indeed," answered the head butler gravely.
"It is not surprising," she continued, "when a man takes no nourishment. Fancy, monsieur, that for two days he has never tasted broth!"
"Nor a glass of wine," added the major-domo, crossing his hands over his portly, well-lined person.
As it seemed expected of me, I expressed my surprise, on which Tobias Offenloch came to sit at my right hand, and said—
"Doctor, take my advice; order him a bottle a day of Marcobrunner."
"And," chimed in Marie Lagoutte, "a wing of a chicken at every meal. The poor man is frightfully thin."
"We have got Marcobrunner sixty years in bottle," added the major-domo, "for it is a mistake of Madame Offenloch's to suppose that the French drank it all. And you had better order, while you are about it, now and then, a good bottle of Johannisberg. That is the best wine to set a man up again."