costly figured,
and it actually seemed as if every land of Europe had contributed
some delicacy or other to represent its claims to epicurism, at this
congress. There were caviare from Russia, and oysters from Ostend,
and red trout from the Highlands, and plover-eggs and pheasants from
Bohemia, and partridges from Alsace, and scores of other delicacies,
each attended by its appropriate wine; to discuss which, with all the
high connoisseurship of the table, furnished the whole conversation.
Politics and literature apart, no subject could have been more removed
from all Tony's experiences. He had never read Brillat-Savarin, nor so
much as heard of M. Ude,--of the great controversy between the merits
of white and brown truffles, he knew positively nothing; and he had
actually eaten terrapin, and believed it to be very exquisite veal!

He listened, and listened very attentively. If it might have seemed to
him that the company devoted a most extravagant portion of the time to
the discussion, there was such a realism in the presence of the good
things themselves, that the conversation never descended to frivolity;
while there was an earnestness in the talkers that rejected such an
imputation.

To hear them, one would have thought--at least, Tony thought--that all
their lives had been passed in dining, Could any memory retain the
mass of small minute circumstances that they recorded, or did they keep
prandial records as others keep game-books? Not one of them ever forgot
where and when and how he had ever eaten anything remarkable for its
excellence; and there was an elevation of language, an ecstasy imported
into the reminiscences, that only ceased to be ludicrous when he grew
used to it. Perhaps, as a mere listener, he partook more freely than
he otherwise might of the good things before him. In the excellence and
endless variety of the wines, there was, besides, temptation for cooler
heads than his; not to add that on one or two occasions he found
himself in a jury empanelled to pronounce upon some nice question of
flavor,--points upon which, as the evening wore on, he entered with a
far greater reliance on his judgment than he would have felt half an
hour before dinner.

He had not what is called, in the language of the table, a "made
head,"--that is to say, at Lyle Abbey, his bottle of Sneyd's Claret
after dinner was more than he liked well to drink; but now, when
Sauterne succeeded Sherry, and Marcobrunner came after