XIII
Every evening at eight o'clock—although, honestly ashamed of having been the cause of such a change in the household, we made every effort to prevent it—every evening at eight o'clock, the door of the drawing-room opened and Jacob announced the supper.
The dining-room was rather small and narrow, and was nearly filled by the oblong table, at one end of which Wagner took his place.
To the supper, consisting of cold meats, salad, cakes and fruit, the Master loved to add some of the champagne of his friend Chandon, and this, he said, we could drink without hesitation because his French admirer had presented him with more than he could use.
Wagner enjoyed this supper and declared that he could not understand why he had not instituted it long before.
"We never thought of it," said he. "It is an incredible oversight not to have thought of a thing so agreeable, even indispensable! In future, it shall always be served, and we shall bless the reform that was brought about by your fasting of the first evening."
We lingered at table, talking. The Master's words, now violent and impassioned, now joyous, but always sincere, made an intense, almost a magnetic impression upon us. We passed through all the phases that they described—enthusiasm, indignation, despair. Each circumstance that he recalled of his life, so full of vexations, "les misérabilités," as he said, he seemed to live over again, and we also endured with him all the heart-breaks and the pangs. Yet, if he saw us becoming too deeply moved, in order that we might recover ourselves, he would give expression, without any change of voice, to some irresistible bit of fun, and end by making us shout with laughter.
The pug-dog, "Cos," having a slight irritation of the skin, was on a diet, and meat had been forbidden him. If, unable to resist his urgent pleadings, one of the company stealthily gave him a little morsel, Wagner stopped abruptly in whatever he was saying, and emphatically repeated the doctor's orders. It was wonderful, that considerate thoughtfulness, in which nothing escaped him; and it revealed to us the infinite goodness, the boundless altruism of that great man, with his overwhelming personality.