If I can ever be useful to you, let me know." "Well," said Oscar, "I'll admit to you now that you once did me a very great harm." "Pooh!" said Georges, after listening to the explanation for which he asked; "it was Monsieur de Serizy who behaved badly.

His wife! I wouldn't have her at any price; neither would I like to be in the count's red skin, minister of State and peer of France as he is.

He has a small mind, and I don't care a fig for him now." Oscar listened with true pleasure to these slurs on the count, for they diminished, in a way, the importance of his fault; and he echoed the spiteful language of the ex-notary, who amused himself by predicting the blows to the nobility of which the bourgeoisie were already dreaming,--blows which were destined to become a reality in 1830.
At half-past three the solid eating of the feast began; the dessert did not appear till eight o'clock,--each course having taken two hours to serve.

None but clerks can eat like that! The stomachs of eighteen and twenty are inexplicable to the medical art.

The wines were worthy of Borrel, who in those days had superseded the illustrious Balaine, the creator of the first restaurant for delicate and perfectly prepared food in Paris,--that is to say, the whole world.
The report of this Belshazzar's feast for the architriclino-basochien register was duly drawn up, beginning, "Inter pocula aurea restauranti, qui vulgo dicitur Rupes Cancali." Every one can imagine the fine page now added to the Golden Book of jurisprudential festivals.
Godeschal disappeared after signing the report, leaving the eleven guests, stimulated by the old captain of the Imperial Guard, to the wines, toasts, and liqueurs of a dessert composed of choice and early fruits, in pyramids that rivalled the obelisk of Thebes.