"It's customary. We have a pike; salmon would have been better, but as the very smallest ones are worth from fifteen to twenty francs——"
"What an outrage! And to think that there are people who eat salmon!"
"So I had a pike instead, and for that we must have a caper sauce."
"Why can't it be eaten without sauce?"
"It wouldn't be good.—Flanking the fish we shall have cutlets with peas and a tourte aux boulettes."
"The twenty-four-sou kind, I trust?"
"For eleven people! the idea! The two-franc size, and that will be very scant!"
"Well, I hope that that's all."
"I should think not! that's only the first course. Now we come to the second."
"Great God!"