y champagne was sending up its pearly sparkles in a
beautifully-cut crystal decanter. The canon had not unloosed the napkin
from his neck, but had let it stay where it was when he had received
the young lawyer; and, after the footman had quickly supplied a second
cover, he proceeded to place the choicest morsels before the despairing
lover and to pour out wine for him; and then he set to work heartily
himself. Some one once had the hardihood to maintain that the stomach
is equivalent to all the other physical and intellectual parts of man
put together. That is a profane and abominable doctrine; but this much
is certain, that the stomach is like a despotic tyrant or ironical
mystifier, and often carries through its own will. And this was the
case in the present instance. For instinctively, without being clearly
conscious of what he was about, the young lawyer had in a few minutes
devoured a huge piece of Bayonne ham, created terrible devastation
amongst the Portuguese garniture, put out of sight half a partridge, no
inconsiderable quantity of trufles, and also more Strasburg _pates_
than was exactly becoming in a young advocate full of trouble.
Moreover, they both relished the champagne so much that the footman
soon had to fill up the crystal decanter a second time.

The advocate felt a pleasant and beneficial degree of warmth penetrate
his vitals, and all he experienced of his trouble was a singular sort
of shiver, which exactly resembled electric shocks, causing pain but
doing good. He proved himself susceptible to the consolations of his
patron, who, after comfortably sipping up his last glass of wine and
elegantly wiping his mouth, settled himself into position and began as
follows:--

"In the first place, my dear good friend, you must not be so foolish as
to imagine that you are the only man on earth to whom a father has
refused the hand of his daughter. But that's nothing to do with the
present case. As I have already told you, the old fool's reason for
hating you is so preposterously absurd that it cannot last long; and
whether it appear to you at this moment nonsensical or not, I can
hardly bear the thought of all ending in a tame commonplace wedding, so
that the whole thing may be summed up in the few words,--Peter has
wooed Grete,[11] and Peter and Grete are man and wife.

"The situation is, however, so far new and grand in that it is merely
hatred against a class to which the beloved foster-son belongs that