"What a man!" exclaimed the majordomo, with an expression of profound admiration, "he thinks of everything!"
The canon, whose agitation was increasing, lifted the top of the silver dish with a trembling hand.
Suddenly a delicious odour spread itself through the atmosphere. Pablo clasped his hands, dilating his wide nostrils and looking at the dish with a greedy eye.
In the middle of the silver dish, half steeped in an unctuous, velvety gravy of a beautiful rosy hue, the majordomo saw four little round soft eggs, that seemed still to tremble with their smoking, golden frying.
The canon, struck like his majordomo with the delicious fragrance of the dish, literally ate it with his eyes, and for the first time in two months a sudden desire of appetite tickled his palate. Nevertheless, he still doubted, believing in the deceitful illusion of a false hunger. Taking in a spoon one of the little eggs, well impregnated with gravy, he shovelled it into his large mouth.
"Masticate _pianissimo_, my lord!" cried Pablo, who followed every motion of his master with a beating heart. "Masticate slowly, the magician said, and afterward drink this, according to the directions."
And Pablo poured out two fingers of the Madeira wine of 1807, in a glass as thin as the peel of an onion, and presented it to Dom Diégo.
Oh, wonder! Oh, marvel! Oh, miracle! The second movement of the mastication _pianissimo_ was hardly accomplished when the canon threw his head gently back, and, half shutting his eyes in a sort of ecstasy, crossed his two hands on his breast, still holding in one hand the spoon with which he had just served himself.
"Well, my lord?" said Pablo, with keen interest, as he presented the two fingers of Madeira wine, "well?"
The canon did not reply, but took the glass eagerly and carried it to his lips.
"Above all, sir, drink with meditation," cried Pablo, a scrupulous observer of the cook's order.
The canon drank, indeed, with meditation, then clapped his tongue against his palate, and, if that can be said, listened an instant to relish the flower of the wine which mingled so marvellously with the after-taste of the dish he had just tasted; then, without replying to the interrogations of Pablo, he ate _pianissimo_ the three last Guinea fowl eggs, with a pensive and increasing delectation, emptied the little flagon of Madeira wine, and,--must we confess the dreadful impropriety?--he actually dipped his bread so scrupulously into every drop of the crab gravy in which the eggs were served that the bottom of the silver dish soon shone with an immaculate lustre.