"I have informed these gentlemen of your frightful trade, my bad boy," said Doctor Gasterini to his nephew Leonard, with a smile. "My lord canon and the saintly abbé will pray for the salvation of your soul."
"Oh, oh, my good uncle!" replied Leonard, good-naturedly, "I would rather have them pray for success in shooting the two finest deer, as company for the wild boar I have killed, whose head and fillets I present to you, uncle."
"Alas, alas, he is incorrigible!" said Doctor Gasterini, "and unhappily, my lord canon, you have no idea of the deliciousness of the flavour peculiar to the minced fillets and properly stuffed head of a year-old wild boar, seasoned à la Saint Hubert! Ah, my dear canon, how rich, how juicy! It was right to put this divine dish under the protection of the patron saint of the chase. But let us pass on," continued the doctor, preceding Dom Diégo, who was fascinated and dazzled by a display entirely novel to him, for such wealth of game is unknown in Spain.
"Oh, how grand is Nature in her creations!" said the canon; "what a marvellous scale of pleasures for the palate from the monstrous wild boar to the fig-pecker,--that exquisite little bird! Glory, glory to thee, eternal gratitude to thee," added he, in the manner of an ejaculatory prayer.
"Bravo, Dom Diégo!" cried the doctor, "now are you in the right."
"Now he is in materialism, in paganism, and the grossest pantheism," said the intractable abbé. "You will damn him, doctor, you will destroy his soul!"
"Still a little patience, my dear abbé," replied the doctor, walking toward another stall. "Soon, in spite of yourself, you will be convinced that I speak truly in extolling the excellence of gluttony, or rather you will think as I do, although you will take occasion to deny the evidence. Now, canon, you are going to see how this gluttony, so dear to you and me, becomes one of the causes of the progress of agriculture, the real basis of the prosperity of the country. And with this subject let me introduce to you my nephew Mathurin, a tiller of those salt meadows, which nourish the only beasts worthy of the gourmand, and which give him those invaluable legs of mutton, those unsurpassed cutlets, those fillets of wonderful beef which even England envies us. I present to you also my nephew Mathurin's wife, native of Le Mans, and familiar with that illustrious school of fattening animals, which produces those pullets and capons known as one of the glories and riches of France."