The host announced the welcome tidings that in a few minutes our repast should be paraded: and further added, that he was commissioned to inquire whether we would permit the two gentlemen who had remained in the kitchen, to join our company—and the host was ready, even upon oath, to guarantee their respectability. The lineage of the hidalgo was so ancient, that all traces of it were lost; and of the doctor, Fame spake loudly, as a personage who could do anything but raise the dead. To this double application I returned a gracious reply; and in five minutes a powerful odour of garlic and onions was felt in the direction of the kitchen, and the innkeeper re-entered with a huge turreen. heralding to our presence the descendant of Don Quixote, and his friend the short stout gentleman.
CHAPTER XXXIV. FARTHER ADVENTURES—MEMOIR OF THE VOLTIGEUR.
“She turned her face unto the wall.
Her colour changed to pallid clay;
Long ere the dews began to fall.
The flower of Ettriek lifeless lay.”
The Queen’s Wake.
Never was a Lord Mayor’s dinner put on a table with more ceremony, than that with which our supper was served up; and yet, the whole entertainment was embodied in one tureen. What its contents were, none, save those who designed and fabricated the medley, could even pretend to guess at. In an ocean of oleaginous liquid, a lean fowl was floating, surrounded by shapeless substances, which might possibly be either “fish, flesh, or good salt herring.” It looked grease, and smelt garlic. The host, however, praised it excessively, and so would an Esquimaux; but I am morally certain, it was the last thing, in the shape of a light supper, that either Paris or Abernethy would have recommended to a dyspeptic patient.