Caviar.
Potage consommé à la Diane.
Filets de sole aux délices.
Suprêmes de volaille grillés.
Carottes nouvelles à la crème.
Laitues braisées en cocotte.
Cailles à la Sainte Alliance.
Salade de chicorée frisée.
Croûtes à la Caume.
Soufflé glacé à la mandarine.
Then, having nothing in particular to do for a quarter of an hour, I walked round the building with M. Lefèvre, looked in at the Great Hall where the statue of Shakespeare gazes contemplatively down upon the chairman's head at big public dinners; the hall next to it, which is only one degree smaller in size; the Masonic temple and the Chapter-room; and the prettiest room of all, the room in which the French dinner is served, on the walls of which is an Oriental design of roses which would not have been out of place in one of the pleasure chambers of Akbar at Agra.
In the evening, before Miss Brighteyes, who was to be escorted as far as the ante-room to the East Room by Sir George, arrived, I had a few minutes in which to go and see that all was ready at my table, and to look round to see whether there was anybody whom I knew dining. It was, I should think, the first occasion on which I have dined in the East Room and have not recognised a single face; but all the ladies appeared very smart, all the men were well groomed, the usual type of diners at a good restaurant. If I had looked at the book in which the names of people ordering dinners are noted, I should no doubt have found that there were a dozen people among the well-dressed diners whose names are familiar in our mouths as household words.
The little ante-room, with its green and cream walls, its mirrors, its big fireplace, and its comfortable chairs, is cosy enough to have a soothing effect on a worse-tempered man than myself; and my patience was not much tried, for Sir George formally handed over Miss Brighteyes to me not five minutes after the time at which I had ordered dinner.
Miss Brighteyes looked very delightful in a dress of some white gossamer material with spangly adornments, which resembled diamonds, scattered over it. She wore a diamond brooch and a necklet of pearls with a diamond clasp, which had been her birthday presents from her father on her seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays.
When Miss Brighteyes gets up on her society high horse she reduces me to comparative silence. While I was being given some details as to beautiful decorations at St. George's on the occasion of her cousin's wedding, I tried in vain to make Miss Brighteyes understand that the caviar she was eating deserved some attention, but she was not to be turned from her account of an aisle decorated with chrysanthemums and palms.
Had a man dared to talk to me about the Grafton Supper Club while he was drinking the delicious consommé I should have reproved him, and asked him to reserve conversation for the interludes of the repast; but Miss Brighteyes, not thinking in the least of the serious responsibility of eating a good dinner, chattered gaily of Miss Mary Moore's black and white dress at the supper a week gone by, and reeled off a catalogue of names from the Peerage of the men who had been her partners at the little informal dance that followed the supper.
While I ate with appreciation the délices de sole, I was told why Miss Brighteyes preferred Princes' to Niagara as a skating-rink, or vice versa, I forget which.
With the suprême de volaille I was given a short account of a party at the Bachelors' Club to see a magic-lantern entertainment, and when the cailles à la Sainte Alliance were brought up Miss Brighteyes was beginning to tell me of some charades, at her aunt's house, acted by children. But the quails were a dish in the presence of which I felt that small talk must cease. "Miss Brighteyes," I said gravely, "cast your eyes around this room. You see dainty panels of dark green traced over with gold, you see red and gold cornices, a ceiling of cream and gold studded with lights innumerable, bronze velvet curtains, yellow-shaded lamps, fine napery, glass, and silver. All this is but the framing to what is contained in this little earthen terrine. Into the interior of a little ortolan M. Gastaud himself, the chef cuisinier, has introduced a little block of truffle and other delicacies. That little ortolan has been imbedded in a quail, and this sacred alliance, over which M. Jeannin, chef des cuisiniers, has smiled, has been served up cooked to the instant for your delectation. Is this a moment, then, young lady, to talk of children's charades? Is not thankful silence better?"