the Cafe de Paris. As a rule these excursions were followed
by an invitation to dine at Dumas' two or three days hence, when the
knowledge freshly acquired would be put into practice.

There were few of us who questioned Dumas' literary genius; there were
many who suspected his culinary abilities, and notably among them, Dr.
Veron. The germs of this unbelief had been sown in the doctor's mind by
his own cordon-bleu, Sophie. The erstwhile director of the opera lived,
at that time, in a beautiful apartment on the first floor of a nice
house in the Rue Taitbout, at the corner of which the Cafe de Paris was
situated. Sophie had virtually a sinecure of it, because, with the
exception of a dinner-party now and then, her master, who was a
bachelor, took his dinners at the restaurant. And with regard to the
dejeuner, there was not much chance of her displaying her talents,
because the man, who was reputed to be a very Apicius, was frugality
itself. His reasons for dining out instead of at home were perfectly
logical, though they sounded paradoxical. One day, when I was remarking
upon the seemingly strange habit of dining out, when he was paying "a
perfect treasure" at home, he gave me these reasons. "My dear friend,
depend upon it that it is man's stomach which found the aphorism, 'Qui
va _piano_ va _sano_, qui va _sano_ va _lontano_.' In your own home the
soup is on the table at a certain hour, the roast is taken off the jack,
the dessert is spread out on the sideboard. Your servants, in order to
get more time over their meals, hurry you up; they do not serve you,
they gorge you. At the restaurant, on the contrary, they are never in a
hurry, they let you wait. And, besides, I always tell the waiters not to
mind me; that I like being kept a long while--that is one of the reasons
why I come here.

"Another thing, at the restaurant the door is opened at every moment and
something happens. A friend, a chum, or a mere acquaintance comes in;
one chats and laughs: all this aids digestion. A man ought not to be
like a boa-constrictor, he ought not to make digestion a business apart.
He ought to dine and to digest at the same time, and nothing aids this
dual function like good conversation. Perhaps the servant of Madame de
Maintenon, when the latter was still Madame Scarron, was a greater
philosopher than we suspect when he whispered to his mistress, 'Madame,
the roast has run short; give them another story.'

"I knew a philanthropis