"To be invited to dine with the celebrated Doctor Gasterini."
"The most illustrious, the most profound gourmand of Europe."
"They say, really, that his table is an ideal of the paradise of gourmands."
"I do not know, alas! if this paradise will be as open to me as the other, but I hope so."
"I confess my weakness. Of all that I have seen in Paris, what has most charmed me, fascinated me, dazzled me, I will even say instructed—"
"Well, is what?"
"It is—our proud and modest Germany will blush at the blasphemy—it is—"
"It is the Mabille ball!"
The laughter and the exclamations provoked by this frank avowal lasted until one of the secretaries of the archduke entered, holding two letters in his hand, and saying, gaily: