The Minister said with a touch of malice:
"It is quite certain that there has been no fresh meat in Paris now for some time. Except ass and mule flesh at fifteen francs a pound. Dogs and cats are getting scarce, consequently ragoût de lièvre has become the staple dish at all the restaurants...."
Hatzfeldt rejoined with a sigh:
"I am not quite sure that a little starvation would not be good for myself personally, and one or two others of the Prussian Foreign Office staff. For there is no denying we eat a great deal too much. Your Excellency knows there are few nights when we spend at the dinner table less than two hours and a half."
The answer came:
"You should eat little for breakfast, and nothing in the middle of the day; then your stomachs would neigh and prance at the dinner call as mine never fails to do. Sometimes you see me dine twice without ill results—as when I am going to the King, who keeps a bad table—and find it necessary to fortify myself beforehand...."
He broke off speaking to cough and expectorate, and Hatzfeldt, noting the deep yellow hue of his jaws and temples and forehead, and the sagging pouches under the great eyes, and the caves that his anxieties and labors had recently dug about them, said to himself that the Chief's health was not what it had been; that any fool could see with half an eye he was terribly liverish; that he slept little and spat bile continually, and that his superhuman capacity for work, in combination with his superhuman powers of eating and drinking, were maintained at high pressure by a remorseless vanity that proved him no stronger or wiser than other men.
What was he saying in tones tinged with mockery, for he had probably taken that reference to the excess of luxury at the Foreign Office in the Rue de Provence as a thrust directed at himself:
"If you would really like to try high living after the latest Parisian style, I have at home among some letters taken from a balloon captured yesterday the menu of a dinner given at Voisin's on the twenty-first by some rich Americans: Potage St. Germain.... Côtelettes de loup chasseur.... Chat garni des rats rôtis, sauce poivrade. Rosbif de Chameau.... Salade de légumes. Cèpes à la Bordelaise. Dessert, none at all.... I gathered from the same source that the Government are going to take over all private stores of provisions, and that the edible animals confined in the Jardin des Plantes are to be shot and cut up for sale."
"Good-bye to poor Touti's ponies, then," said the Secretary, with resignation, "and possibly farewell also to my hopes of a sturdy son and heir."