The little Professor was in a particularly good humor that evening. He wore a new violet rosette.
"Well?" he said, in a mocking tone, "you have seen her?"
Neither Morhange nor I replied.
The Reverend Spardek and the Hetmari of Jitomir already had begun eating when we arrived. The setting sun threw raspberry lights on the cream-colored mat.
"Be seated, gentlemen," said Le Mesge noisily. "Lieutenant de Saint-Avit, you were not with us last evening. You are about to taste the cooking of Koukou, our Bambara chef, for the first time. You must give me your opinion of it."
A Negro waiter set before me a superb fish covered with a pimento sauce as red as tomatoes.
I have explained that I was ravenously hungry. The dish was exquisite. The sauce immediately made me thirsty.
"White Ahaggar, 1879," the Herman of Jitomir breathed in my ear as he filled my goblet with a clear topaz liquid. "I developed it myself: rien pour la tête, tout pour les jambes."
I emptied the goblet at a gulp. The company began to seem charming.
"Well, Captain Morhange," Le Mesge called out to my comrade who had taken a mouthful of fish, "what do you say to this acanthopterygian? It was caught to-day in the lake in the oasis. Do you begin to admit the hypothesis of the Saharan sea?"