"Oh, very seriously."
At this moment supper was announced.
"Be so good as to have all we will be likely to need placed on the side-tables, and send away your servants; we will talk more freely," said Lord Falmouth, in English, as we were going into the dining-room.
"Thanks to God," said he, "I never have such a good appetite as when I am bored to death. It seems as though I had at such times to nourish the beast that is within me."
"I am also very gourmand, but in fits and starts," I replied, "and then I go to impossible lengths, and when I would like to find an inventive and creative genius I only stumble on a cook. And you may laugh if you please; but I need to have an excuse to really dine conscientiously, if you will allow me to say so; for example, after a long hunt, when I can stretch out in a great armchair. I then feel a real sensual enjoyment; but to make a study of my dinner, to seriously reflect on what I am going to eat, that is too limited a pleasure; for one soon falls into repetition and then comes satiety."
"Well," said Lord Falmouth, "I had once a veritable Christopher Columbus, in his way, who discovered for me unknown worlds, but unfortunately he is dead, poor fellow! Not a suicide like your Vatel, but in a real duel with the head butler of M. de Nesselrode; for my poor Hubert deeply despised all that concerned the pantry; he would sometimes busy himself there by way of pastime, for amusement, he would say. He pretended that the pudding glacé à la Nesselrode was the result of one of these leisure hours, and that his rival was simply a plagiarist. But alas! how sad is our fate here below! My poor Hubert was doubly the victim, for the name of the great diplomat who christened the pudding is the only name that it bears in the legend of good livers."
"What a singular thing it is," said I to Lord Falmouth, "that duelling and suicide should descend so low, and how truly it is said that the passions only change their names!"
"Ah, for my poor Hubert the cuisine was a real passion. To satisfy hunger was only a vile trade, he said, but to make people eat when they were not hungry, he considered a fine art, and one he placed higher than many another."
"And he was quite right," said I to Lord Falmouth; "for if we all were virtuous enough only to care for sensual pleasures, how deadly stupid life would be! The most admirable thing about the cravings of physical appetite is that they can always be appeased, and being satisfied, bring us a torpor, a dullness, which has a certain charm, while the desires of the mind, its most splendid imaginings, only fill us with regret and bitterness."
"I think as you do," said Lord Falmouth, "it is evident that every abstract thought pursued too long a time only leaves us in a state of lassitude and chagrin, because it is not given to the human species to comprehend the eternally true, nor to attain to the eternally perfect, while a physical appetite liberally satisfied leaves the organisation calm and contented, because in this man has fulfilled an exact want of nature."