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The excellence
of the result affected Pasquale so strongly that with his
customary disregard of convention he insisted on Antoinette being
summoned to receive his congratulations. He rose, made her a bow
as if she were a Marquise of pre-revolutionary days.
"It is a meal," said he, bunching up his fingers to his mouth and
kissing them open, "that one should have taken not sitting, but
kneeling."
"You stole that from Heine," said I, when the enraptured creature
had gone, "and you gave it out to Antoinette as if it were your
own."
"My good Ordeyne," said he, "did you ever hear of a man giving
anything authentic to a woman?"
"You know much more about the matter than I do," I replied, and
Pasquale laughed.
It has been a pleasure to see him again--a creature of abounding
vitality whom time cannot alter. He is as lithe-limbed as when
he was a boy, and as lithe-witted. I don't know how his
consciousness could have arrived at appreciation of Antoinette's
cooking, for he talked all through dinner, giving me an account
of his mirific adventures in foreign cities.


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