y on the pleasures of life, you would have found
no cause to hate usurious discounts, or to curse bankruptcies. Mankind
can't always be doing evil. Even in the society of pirates one might
find a few sweet hours during which we could fancy their sinister craft
a pleasure-boat rocking on the deep.

"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 negati