Thinking it might be agreeable to him, I informed him, a few weeks ago, that our hunting-meetings were about to secure him a concourse of connoisseurs worthy of his talents." "Monsiuer le Marquis will excuse me," replied Rostain with a melancholy smile, "if I do not share his illusions; in the first place, the hunter devours and does not eat; he brings to the table the stomach of a man just saved from shipwreck, _iratum ventrem_, as Horace says, and swallows up without choice and without reflection, _gulae parens_, the most serious productions of an artist; in the second place, the violent exercise of the chase has developed in such guests an inordinate thirst, which they generally slake without moderation.

Now, Monsieur le Marquis is not ignorant of the opinion of the ancients on the excessive use of wine during meals; it blunts the taste--_ersurdant vina palatum_! Nevertheless, Monsieur le Marquis may rest assured that I shall labor to please his guests with my usual conscientiousness, though with the painful certainty of not being understood." After uttering these words, Rostain draped himself in his toga, cast to heaven the look of an unappreciated genius, and left my study.
"I would have thought," I said to the marquis, "that you would have spared no sacrifice to retain that great man." "You judge me correctly, sir," replied Monsieur de Malouet; "but you'll see that he carried me to the very limits of impossibility.

Precisely a week ago, Monsieur Rostain, having solicited a private audience, announced to me that he found himself under the painful necessity of leaving my service.

'Heavens! Monsieur Rostain to leave my service! And where do you expect to go ?' 'To Paris.' 'What! to Paris! But you had shaken upon the great Babylon the dust of your sandals! The decadence of taste, the increasing development of the romantic cuisine! Such are your own words, Rostain!' He replied: 'Doubtless, Monsieur le Marquis; but provincial life has bitter trials which I had not foreseen!' I offered him fabulous wages; he refused.

'Come, my good fellow, what is the matter?
Ah! I see, you don't like the scullery-maid; she disturbs your meditations by her vulgar songs; very well, consider her dismissed! That is not enough?
Is it Antoine, then, who is objectionable?
I'll discharge him! Is it the coachman?
I'll send him away!' In short, I offered him, gentlemen, the whole household as a holocaust.