The popular physician of the county and famous anecdotal wit, Dr. Corney, had been a guest at dinner overnight, and the next day there was talk of him, and of the resources of his art displayed by Armand Dehors on his hearing that he was to minister to the tastes of a gathering of hommes d’esprit.  Sir Willoughby glanced at Dehors with his customary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons, great in their way, who served him.  “Why he cannot give us daily so good a dinner, one must, I suppose, go to French nature to learn.  The French are in the habit of making up for all their deficiencies with enthusiasm.  They have no reverence; if I had said to him, ’I want something particularly excellent, Dehors’, I should have had a commonplace dinner.  But they have enthusiasm on draught, and that is what we must pull at.  Know one Frenchman and you know France.  I have had Dehors under my eye two years, and I can mount his enthusiasm at a word.  He took hommes d’esprit to denote men of letters.  Frenchmen have destroyed their nobility, so, for the sake of excitement, they put up the literary man—­not to worship him; that they can’t do; it’s to put themselves in a state of effervescence.  They will not have real greatness above them, so they have sham.  That they may justly call it equality, perhaps!  Ay, for all your shake of the head, my good Vernon!  You see, human nature comes round again, try as we may to upset it, and the French only differ from us in wading through blood to discover that they are at their old trick once more; ’I am your equal, sir, your born equal.  Oh! you are a man of letters?  Allow me to be in a bubble about you!’ Yes, Vernon, and I believe the fellow looks up to you as the head of the establishment.  I am not jealous.  Provided he attends to his functions!  There’s a French philosopher who’s for naming the days of the year after the birthdays of French men of letters.  Voltaire-day, Rousseau-day, Racine-day, so on.  Perhaps Vernon will inform us who takes April 1st.”

“A few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in the vein of satire,” said Vernon.  “Be satisfied with knowing a nation in the person of a cook.”

“They may be reading us English off in a jockey!” said Dr. Middleton.  “I believe that jockeys are the exchange we make for cooks; and our neighbours do not get the best of the bargain.”

“No; but, my dear good Vernon, it’s nonsensical,” said Sir Willoughby; “why be bawling every day the name of men of letters?”

“Philosophers.”

“Well, philosophers.”

“Of all countries and times.  And they are the benefactors of humanity.”

“Bene—!” Sir Willoughby’s derisive laugh broke the word.  “There’s a pretension in all that, irreconcilable with English sound sense.  Surely you see it?”

“We might,” said Vernon, “if you like, give alternative titles to the days, or have alternating days, devoted to our great families that performed meritorious deeds upon such a day.”