"Please keep your feet
to yourself! You have spoiled my brocade! Is it necessary, pray, to
illustrate a remark in so practical a style? Our friend here can surely
comprehend you without all this. Upon my word, you are nearly as great
a donkey as the poor unfortunate imagined himself. Your acting is very
natural, as I live."

"Mille pardons! Ma'm'selle!" replied Monsieur De Kock, thus
addressed--"a thousand pardons! I had no intention of offending.
Ma'm'selle Laplace--Monsieur De Kock will do himself the honor of taking
wine with you."

Here Monsieur De Kock bowed low, kissed his hand with much ceremony, and
took wine with Ma'm'selle Laplace.

"Allow me, mon ami," now said Monsieur Maillard, addressing myself,
"allow me to send you a morsel of this veal a la St. Menhoult--you will
find it particularly fine."

At this instant three sturdy waiters had just succeeded in depositing
safely upon the table an enormous dish, or trencher, containing what
I supposed to be the "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen
ademptum." A closer scrutiny assured me, however, that it was only a
small calf roasted whole, and set upon its knees, with an apple in its
mouth, as is the English fashion of dressing a hare.

"Thank you, no," I replied; "to say the truth, I am not particularly
partial to veal a la St.--what is it?--for I do not find that it
altogether agrees with me. I will change my plate, however, and try some
of the rabbit."

There were several side-dishes on the table, containing what appeared
to be the ordinary French rabbit--a very delicious morceau, which I can
recommend.

"Pierre," cried the host, "change this gentleman's plate, and give him a
side-piece of this rabbit au-chat."

"This what?" said I.

"This rabbit au-chat."

"Why, thank you--upon second thoughts, no. I will just help myself to
some of the ham."

There is no knowing what one eats, thought I to myself, at the tables
of these people of the province. I will have none of their rabbit
au-chat--and, for the matter of that, none of their cat-au-rabbit
either.

"And then," said a cadaverous looking personage, near the foot of the
table, taking up the thread of the conversation where it had been broken
off,--"and then, among other oddities, we had a patient, once upon a
time, who very pertinaciously maintained himself to be a Cordova cheese,
and went about, with a knife in his hand, soliciting his friends to try
a small slice from the middle o