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Page 1
"Before we part, Monsieur Hermann will, I trust, tell one more German
story to terrify us?"
These words were said at dessert by a pale fair girl, who had read, no
doubt, the tales of Hoffmann and the novels of Walter Scott. She was
the only daughter of the banker, a charming young creature whose
education was then being finished at the Gymnase, the plays of which
she adored. At this moment the guests were in that happy state of
laziness and silence which follows a delicious dinner, especially if
we have presumed too far on our digestive powers. Leaning back in
their chairs, their wrists lightly resting on the edge of the table,
they were indolently playing with the gilded blades of their
dessert-knives. When a dinner comes to this declining moment some
guests will be seen to play with a pear seed; others roll crumbs of
bread between their fingers and thumbs; lovers trace indistinct
letters with fragments of fruit; misers count the stones on their
plate and arrange them as a manager marshals his supernumeraries at
the back of the stage. These are little gastronomic felicities which
Brillat-Savarin, otherwise so complete an author, overlooked in his
book. The footmen had disappeared. The dessert was like a squadron
after a battle: all the dishes were disabled, pillaged, damaged;
several were wandering around the table, in spite of the efforts of
the mistress of the house to keep them in their places. Some of the
persons present were gazing at pictures of Swiss scenery,
symmetrically hung upon the gray-toned walls of the dining-room. Not
a single guest was bored; in fact, I never yet knew a man who was sad
during his digestion of a good dinner. We like at such moments to
remain in quietude, a species of middle ground between the reverie of
a thinker and the comfort of the ruminating animals; a condition
which we may call the material melancholy of gastronomy.
So the guests now turned spontaneously to the excellent German,
delighted to have a tale to listen to, even though it might prove of
no interest. During this blessed interregnum the voice of a narrator
is always delightful to our languid senses; it increases their
negative happiness. I, a seeker after impressions, admired the faces
about me, enlivened by smiles, beaming in the light of the wax
candles, and somewhat flushed by our late good cheer; their diverse
expressions producing piquant effects seen among the porcelain
baskets, the fruits, the glasses, and the candelabra.
All of a sudden my imagination was caught by the aspect of a guest who
sat directly in front of me. He was a man of medium height, rather fat
and smiling, having the air and manner of a stock-broker, and
apparently endowed with a very ordinary mind. Hitherto I had scarcely
noticed him, but now his face, possibly darkened by a change in the
lights, seemed to me to have altered its character; it had certainly
grown ghastly; violet tones were spreading over it; you might have
thought it the cadaverous head of a dying man. Motionless as the
personages painted on a diorama, his stupefied eyes were fixed on the
sparkling facets of a cut-glass stopper, but certainly without
observing them; he seemed to be engulfed in some weird contemplation
of the future or the past. When I had long examined that puzzling face
I began to reflect about it. "Is he ill?" I said to myself. "Has he
drunk too much wine? Is he ruined by a drop in the Funds? Is he
thinking how to cheat his creditors?"
"Look!" I said to my neighbor, pointing out to her the face of the
unknown man, "is that an embryo bankrupt?"
"Oh, no!" she answered, "he would be much gayer." Then, nodding her
head gracefully, she added, "If that man ever ruins himself I'll tell
it in Pekin! He possesses a million in real estate. That's a former
purveyor to the imperial armies; a good sort of man, and rather
original. He married a second time by way of speculation; but for all
that he makes his wife extremely happy. He has a pretty daughter, whom
he refused for many years to recognize; but the death of his son,
unfortunately killed in a duel, has compelled him to take her home,
for he could not otherwise have children. The poor girl has suddenly
become one of the richest heiresses in Paris. The death of his son
threw the poor man into an agony of grief, which sometimes reappears
on the surface."
At that instant the purveyor raised his eyes and rested them upon me;
that glance made me quiver, so full was it of gloomy thought. But
suddenly his face grew lively; he picked up the cut-glass stopper and
put it, with a mechanical movement, into a decanter full of water that
was near his plate, and then he turned to Monsieur Hermann and smiled.
After all, that man, now beatified by gastronomical enjoyments, hadn't
probably two ideas in his brain, and was thinking of nothing.
Consequently I felt rather ashamed of wasting my powers of divination
"in anima vili,"--of a doltish financier.
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