“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 of his leg.”

“He was a great fool, beyond doubt,” interposed some one, “but not to be compared with a certain individual whom we all know, with the exception of this strange gentleman.  I mean the man who took himself for a bottle of champagne, and always went off with a pop and a fizz, in this fashion.”

Here the speaker, very rudely, as I thought, put his right thumb in his left cheek, withdrew it with a sound resembling the popping of a cork, and then, by a dexterous movement of the tongue upon the teeth, created a sharp hissing and fizzing, which lasted for several minutes, in imitation of the frothing of champagne.  This behavior, I saw plainly, was not very pleasing to Monsieur Maillard; but that gentleman said nothing, and the conversation was resumed by a very lean little man in a big wig.