DORANTE: Let's consider eating.
LACKEY: Everything is ready, sir.
DORANTE: Come then let us sit at the table. And bring on the musicians. (Six cooks, who have prepared the feast, dance together and make the third interlude; after which, they carry in a table covered with many dishes.)
ACT FOUR
SCENE I (Dorimène, Monsieur Jourdain, Dorante, two Male Musicians, a Female Musician, Lackeys)
DORIMÈNE: Why, Dorante, that is really a magnificent repast!
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: You jest, Madame; I wish it were worthy of being offered to you. (All sit at the table).
DORANTE: Monsieur Jourdain is right, Madame, to speak so, and he obliges me by making you so welcome. I agree with him that the repast is not worthy of you. Since it was I who ordered it, and since I do not have the accomplishments of our friends in this matter, you do not have here a very sophisticated meal, and you will find some incongruities in the combinations and some
barbarities of taste. If Damis, our friend, had been involved, everything would have been according to the rules; everything would have been elegant and appropriate, and he would not have failed to impress upon you the significance of all the dishes of the repast, and to make you see his expertise when it comes to good food; he would have told you about hearth-baked bread, with its golden brown crust, crunching tenderly between the teeth; of a smooth, full-bodied wine, fortified with a piquancy not too strong, of a loin of mutton improved with parsley, of a cut of specially-raised veal as long as this, white and delicate, and which is like an almond paste between the teeth, of partridges complimented by a surprisingly flavorful sauce, and, for his masterpiece, a soup accompanied by a fat young turkey surrounded by pigeons and crowned with white onions mixed with chicory. But, as for me, I declare my ignorance; and, as Monsieur Jourdain has said so well, I only wish that the repast were more worthy of being offered to you.