The canon uttered a profound sigh of satisfaction as he saw the steward open the folding doors of the dining-room.
CONCLUSION.
At the moment the guests of the doctor were about to enter the dining-room, the valet announced:
"Madame the Marquise de Miranda."
"Luxury," whispered the doctor to the abbé. "I feared she might fail us."
Then offering his arm to Madeleine, more beautiful, more bewitching than ever, the doctor said, as he conducted her to the dining-room:
"I had just begun to despair of the good fortune you had promised me, madame. Listen to me, at my age the happiness of seeing you here again you must know is inexpressible. Ah, if I were only fifty years younger!"
"I would take you for my cavalier, my dear doctor," said the marquise, laughing extravagantly; "I think we have been friends, at the least estimate, for fifty years."
We will not undertake to enumerate the wonders of the doctor's elegant dining-room. We will limit ourselves to the menu of this dinner,—a menu which each guest, thanks to a delicate forethought, found under his napkin, between two dozen oysters, one from Ostend and the other from Marennes. This menu was written on white vellum, and encased in a little framework of carved silver leaves enamelled with green. Each guest thus knew how to reserve his appetite for such dishes as he preferred. Let us add only that the size of the table and the dining-room was such that, instead of the narrow and inconvenient chairs which force you to eat, so to speak, with the elbows close to the body, each guest, seated in a large and comfortable chair, the feet on a soft carpet, had all the latitude necessary for the evolutions of his knife and fork. Here is the menu which the canon took with a hand trembling with emotion and read religiously.
MENU FOR DINNER.