“Roast duck,” laughed the Sphinx, “my spirituelle expression comes entirely of roast duck, believe me.”
I could almost believe her in that moment.
“Materialist yourself!” she retorted presently. “You will force me to turn metaphysician and expound to you the mysticism of gastronomy.”
“The metaphysics of duck!” I interjected.
“Precisely.”
“Proceed, then,” said I, and was silent.
“Well,” she began, “I am perfectly serious. It is you that are the materialist, not I, for the reason that the familiarity of the process of eating blinds you to its essentially mysterious nature; that process of transmutation of gastronomic alchemy, by which food is changed into genius and beauty, and the kitchen seen to be the power-house of the soul. After all, my gastronomic theory of the soul is merely one side of the same mystery which we see illustrated every day on another side by the doctor and the chemist. When we take a dose of medicine to tonic our nerves, we don’t laugh sceptically, or even give a thought to the wonder of its operation. Yet surely it is mystery itself that distillations from plants, and tinctures drawn from stones, should hold for us the keys of life and death, and exalt or depress our immortal spirits. Have you ever thought on the marvel that an almost infinitesimal quantity of certain juices distilled from some innocent-faced meadow-flower, a mere dewdrop of harmless-looking liquid, can shatter our life out of us like a charge of dynamite?...”
“A little more duck, m’m?” intervened Dave.
“The dynamics of duck,” I whispered gently. “Go on.”
“Well,” continued the Sphinx, laughing bravely, “the operation of food is exactly the same in its nature as the operation of medicines and poisons. For some unexplained reason, medicines and poisons influence us in certain ways. We don’t know how or why, we only know that they do. The influence of wine again is a part of the same mysterious process. Why should this Rudesheimer affect us differently from this water? Any one unfamiliar with the difference between wine and water would say it was absurd. But it is true for all that—and if you admit the influence of wine, and the influence of various other foreign substances, animal, vegetable and mineral, on the human organism, in the form of medicines, stimulants, poisons and such like, you cannot logically deny the possible influence, say, of duck. Therefore, I contend once more that the harmony between us of which you spoke is a music first composed in the kitchen, transferred to notation on the menu, and finally performed by us in a skillful duet of digestion....”