"It is the truffle I lament. Ah, to marry the truffle to the wild turkey."
The little group laughed. "Old gourmand," cried Du Vallon, "you are still the same."
"Gourmet," corrected Savarin. "Congratulate me. I have found here a cook—Marino, a master, French of course, from San Domingo. You will dine with me at four to-morrow; and you, Monsieur Schmidt, certainly you resemble—"
"Yes," broke in the German. "A likeness often remarked, not very flattering."
"Ah, pardon me. But my dinner—Du Vallon, you will come, and the vicomte, and you and you, and there will be Messieurs Bingham and Rawle and Mr. Meredith, and one Jacobin,—Monsieur Girard,—as I hear a lover of good diet—ah, he gave me the crab which is soft, the citizen crab. Monsieur Girard—I bless him. I have seen women, statesmen, kings, but the crab, ah! the crab 'which is soft.'"
All of them accepted, the émigrés gladly, being, alas! none too well fed.
"And now, adieu. I must go and meditate on my dinner."
The next day at four they met at Marino's, the new restaurant in Front Street then becoming fashionable.
"I have taken the liberty," said Bingham, "to send half a dozen of Madeira, 1745, and two decanters of grape juice, what we call the white. The rest—well, of our best, all of it."
They sat down expectant. "The turkey I have not," said Savarin; "but the soup—ah, you will see,—soup a la reine. Will Citizen Girard decline?"