And I will give dinners, such dinners, my
faith! Ha! that is excellent said--embrace me--my Faith will sit at the
right side of the table, and explain to the English company that such
dinners could proceed from nobody except a French gentleman commingling
all the knowledge of the joint with the loftier conception of the hash,
the mince--the what you call? Ah, you have no name for it, because
you do not know the proper thing. Then, in the presence of admiring
Englishmen, I will lean back in my chair, the most comfortable chair
that can be found--"
"Stop. You have got to get into it yet," Carne interrupted, rudely; "and
the way to do that is not to lean back in it. The fault of your system
has always been that you want to enjoy everything before you get it."
"And of yours," retorted Charron, beginning to imbibe the pugnacity of
an English landlord, "that when you have got everything, you will enjoy
what? Nothing!"
"Even a man of your levity hits the nail on the head sometimes," said
Carne, "though the blow cannot be a very heavy one. Nature has not
fashioned me for enjoyment, and therefore affords me very little. But
some little I do expect in the great inversion coming, in the upset of
the scoundrels who have fattened on my flesh, and stolen my land, to
make country gentlemen--if it were possible--of themselves. It will take
a large chimney to burn their title-deeds, for the robbery has lasted
for a century.
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