"Oh, oh, abbe, what an array of fine words!"

"You deserve them, wicked man; you will be d.a.m.ned, do you hear?--more than d.a.m.ned!"

"G.o.d may will it that we may meet each other some day, my poor abbe."

"I, d.a.m.ned?"

"Eh, eh."

"Do I abandon myself as you do to the brutality of all my appet.i.tes?

Go,--you are a perfect Sardanapalus!"

"Flatterer! but then it is your manner. You reproach an old Lovelace for the enormities of which he would like to be guilty, and in the meantime you know that he has none of them; but it is all the same, your reproaches delight him, they render him cheerful; then he confesses all sorts of sins, of which, alas! he is incapable, poor man, and you have the air of giving a last pretext to his decaying imbecility."

"Fie! fie! doctor, the serpent had no more malignity than you."

"You reproach the broken-down politician, the powerless man of state, not less furiously, for his dark intrigues to overthrow the political world,--Europe, perhaps. Then with what unction the poor man relishes your reproaches! Everybody flies him like a pest when he opens his mouth to bore them with his politics; but what good fortune for him to unveil to you his Machiavellian projects for the advantage of the destinies of Europe, and to find a patient listener to the ravings of his old age."

"Yes, yes, jest, jeer, ridicule, you rascally doctor! You wish to excuse yourself by reviling others."

"Let us see, abbe, let us make an examination of conscience. Our professions will be inverted; I, the physician for the body, am going to ask a consultation with you, the physician for the soul."

"And you will have precious need of this consultation."

"Of what do you accuse me, abbe?"

"In the first place, you are a glutton, like Vitellius, Lucullus, the Prince of Soubise, Talleyrand, D'Aigrefeuille, Cambaceres, and Brillat-Savarin all together."

"A flatterer always! You reproach me for my only great and lofty quality."

"Ah, come now, doctor, do you take me for an oyster with your frivolous talk?"

"Take you for an oyster? How conceited you are! Unfortunately, I cannot make a comparison so advantageous to you, abbe. It would be a heresy, an anachronism. Good oysters (and others are not counted as existing) do not give the right to discuss them until about the middle of November, and we are by no means there."

"This, doctor, may be very witty, but it does not convince me in the least that gluttony is, in you or any other person, a quality."

"I will convince you of it."

"You?"

"I, my dear abbe."

"That would be rather difficult. And how?"

"Give me your evening on the twentieth of November and I will prove that--"

But interrupting himself, the doctor added:

"Come now, my dear abbe, what are you constantly looking at there by the side of that door?"

The holy man, thus taken unawares, blushed to his ears, for he had listened to the doctor with distraction, impatiently turning his eyes toward the door as if he expected a person who had not arrived; but after the first moment of surprise the abbe did not seem disconcerted, and replied:

"What door do you speak of, doctor? I do not know what you mean."

"I mean that you frequently look on this side as if you expected the appearance of some one."

"There is no one in the world, dear doctor, except you, who could have such ideas. I was entirely absorbed in your sophistical but intelligent conversation."

"Ah, abbe, abbe, you overwhelm me!"

"You wish, in a word, doctor, to prove to me that gluttony is a n.o.ble, sublime pa.s.sion, do you not?"

"Sublime, abbe, that is the word, sublime,--if not in itself at least in its consequences; above all, in the interest of agriculture and commerce."

"Come, doctor, that is a paradox. Agriculture and commerce are sustained as other things are."

"It is not a paradox, it is a fact, yes, a fact, and if it is demonstrated to you positively, mathematically, practically, and economically, what can you say? Will you still doubt it?"

"I will doubt, or rather I will believe this abomination less than ever."

"How, in spite of evidence, abbe?"

"Because of evidence, if so be that this evidence can ever exist, for it is by just such means of these pretended evidences, these perfidious appearances, that the bad spirit leads us into the most dangerous snares."

"What, abbe, the devil! I am not a seminarian whom you are preparing to take the bands. You are a man of mind and of knowledge. When I talk reason to you, talk reason to me, and not of the devil and his horns."

"But, pagan, idolater that you are, do you not know that gluttony is perhaps the most abominable of the seven capital sins?"

"In the first place, abbe, I pray you do not calumninate like that the seven capital sins, but speak of them with the deference which is their due. I have found them profoundly respected in general and in particular."

"Indeed, it is not only gluttony that he glorifies,--he pushes his paradox to the glorification of the seven capital sins!"

"Yes, dear abbe, all the seven, considered from a certain point of view."

"That is monomania."

"Will you be convinced, abbe?"

"Of what?"

"Of the possible excellence,--of the conditional existence of the worldly and philosophical excellence of the seven capital sins."

"Really, doctor, do you take me for a child?"

"Give me your evening on the twentieth of November; you will be convinced."

"Come now, doctor, why always the twentieth of November?"