Then turning to the doctor, he added:
"You can instruct me, sir, what to write; a reliable person will take my letter, and go immediately in your carriage to the convent for my niece, and conduct her to this house."
"Lord Dom Diégo," replied the doctor, "you assure the happiness of our two children, the joy of my declining days, and consequently your satisfaction and pleasure in the indulgence of your appetite, for I shall keep my word; I will make you dine every day better than I made you breakfast the other morning. A wing of this house will henceforth be at your disposal; you will do me the honour of eating at my table, and you see that, after the professions I have chosen for my nieces and nephews,—with the knowledge and taste of an epicure, as I have told you,—my larder and my wine-cellar will be always marvellously well appointed and supplied. I am growing old, I have need of a staff in my old age. Horace and his wife shall never leave me. I shall confide to them the collection of my culinary traditions, that they may transmit them from generation to generation; we shall all live together, and we shall enjoy in turn the practice and philosophy of gluttony, my lord canon."
"Doctor, I set my foot upon the very threshold of paradise!" cried the canon. "Ah, Providence is merciful, it loads a poor sinner like myself with blessings!"
"Heresy! blasphemy! impiety!" cried Abbé Ledoux. "You will be damned, thrice damned, as will be your tempter!"
"Come now, dear abbé," replied the doctor, "none of your tricks. Confess at once that I have convinced you by my reasoning."
"I! I am convinced!"
"Certainly, because I defy you—you and all like you, past, present, or future—to get out of this dilemma."
"Let us hear the dilemma."
"If gluttony is a monstrosity, then frugality pushed to the extreme ought to be a virtue."