“Sir,” said Le Mesge, very much excited, “cooks should be left in peace.  Jesus, whom I consider as good a theologian as you, understood that, and it never occurred to him to call Martha away from her oven to talk nonsense to her.”

“Exactly so,” said the Hetman approvingly.

He was holding a jar between his knees and trying to draw its cork.

“Oh, Cotes Roties, wines from the Cote-Rotie!” he murmured to me as he finally succeeded.  “Touch glasses.”

“Koukou denies transubstantiation,” the pastor continued, sadly emptying his glass.

“Eh!” said the Hetman of Jitomir in my ear, “let them talk on.  Don’t you see that they are quite drunk?”

His own voice was thick.  He had the greatest difficulty in the world in filling my goblet to the brim.

I wanted to push the pitcher away.  Then an idea came to me: 

“At this very moment, Morhange....  Whatever he may say....  She is so beautiful.”

I reached out for the glass and emptied it once more.

Le Mesge and the pastor were now engaged in the most extraordinary religious controversy, throwing at each other’s heads the Book of Common Prayer, The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Unigenitus.  Little by little, the Hetman began to show that ascendancy over them, which is the characteristic of a man of the world even when he is thoroughly drunk; the superiority of education over instruction.

Count Bielowsky had drunk five times as much as the Professor or the pastor.  But he carried his wine ten times better.

“Let us leave these drunken fellows,” he said with disgust.  “Come on, old man.  Our partners are waiting in the gaming room.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the Hetman as we entered.  “Permit me to present a new player to you, my friend, Lieutenant de Saint-Avit.”

“Let it go at that,” he murmured in my ear.  “They are the servants.  But I like to fool myself, you see.”

I saw that he was very drunk indeed.

The gaming room was very long and narrow.  A huge table, almost level with the floor and surrounded with cushions on which a dozen natives were lying, was the chief article of furniture.  Two engravings on the wall gave evidence of the happiest broadmindedness in taste; one of da Vinci’s St. John the Baptist, and the Maison des Dernieres Cartouches of Alphonse de Neuville.

On the table were earthenware goblets.  A heavy jar held palm liqueur.

I recognized acquaintances among those present; my masseur, the manicure, the barber, and two or three Tuareg who had lowered their veils and were gravely smoking long pipes.  While waiting for something better, all were plunged in the delights of a card game that looked like “rams.”  Two of Antinea’s beautiful ladies in waiting, Aguida and Sydya, were among the number.  Their smooth bistre skins gleamed beneath veils shot with silver.  I was sorry not to see the red silk tunic of Tanit-Zerga.  Again, I thought of Morhange, but only for an instant.