He
inspected the dishes through his spectacles. He knew, by what was
left, the ability of the guests to discriminate what they had eaten
and to do justice to his skill. He considered himself a sort of
pervading divinity, whose culinary ideas passing with his cookery
into the bodies of the guests enabled them, on retiring from the
feast, to carry away as part of themselves some of the fine essence
of Maitre Gobet himself.
At the head of his table, peeling oranges and slicing pineapples for
the ladies in his vicinity, sat the Bourgeois himself, laughing,
jesting, and telling anecdotes with a geniality that was contagious.
"'The gods are merry sometimes,' says Homer, 'and their laughter
shakes Olympus!'" was the classical remark of Father de Berey, at
the other end of the table. Jupiter did not laugh with less loss of
dignity than the Bourgeois.
Few of the guests did not remember to the end of their lives the
majestic and happy countenance of the Bourgeois on this memorable
day.
At his right hand sat Amelie de Repentigny and the Count de la
Galissoniere.
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