"Supper!" said the bishop in astonishment, "I have not yet dined; besides I never eat supper."
"The devil take your inhuman fashion, then!" replied the seneschal: "in extreme necessity I might forego a dinner, provided I had eaten an overwhelming breakfast; but I would as soon die as go without my supper. To go to bed without supper is a base and aristocratic custom; I say it is an error offensive to nature, and nature's dictates; all fasting is bad save breakfasting. That wicked pope who first invented fasting ought to have been baked alive in the papal kitchen."
To the latter part of the seneschal's speech the bishop mentally assented; but he merely said,
"Go to, thou gorged dullard, and tell thy master to gormandize without me."
"Well, go I suppose I must, if you will not come," returned the seneschal, "for I cannot longer tarry here. Ah, Sir Bishop, did you feel the gnawings of my stomach, you would be glad to throw some food to the hungry mastiff that seems feeding upon my very vitals!"
"Hold thy balderdash!" said the bishop, who had become very irritated, and would have sworn, had it been etiquette to do so in those days, at the effusive and edacious harangue of the seneschal. "Verily, thy hunger and thirst have gotten the better of thy wits! Whence comest thou?"
"From within the pincernary of that castle, where I have been indefatigably filling the goblets," answered the seneschal, smacking his lips. "Sitio! sitio! my parched mouth moistens at the thought! Oh! the lachryma Christi, the nectar, the ambrosia, and the true Falernian! Ah! Sir Bishop, some persons drink to quench their thirst, but I drink to prevent it."
"Pshaw!" said the bishop, "the wine that thou hast already drunken hath fuddled thy brains."
"By a gammon of the saltest bacon!" returned the seneschal, "I have more sense of what is good in my little finger than your reverence has in your whole pate, or you would not stand shilly-shambling here whilst so goodly a supper waits within."
The bishop was highly incensed at the seneschal's reflection upon his pate, and would have followed, had he dared, the slashing example of his namesake, and have smitten off the ear of this high-priest of the pantry; (for he always wore a sword, even in the pulpit, firmly believing in the efficacy of cold steel, knowing from experience that it would make a deeper and more lasting impression upon human obduracy than the most eloquent preaching;) but the bishop was deterred by prudential reflections from such sanguinary vengeance.