So it was explained to me by the incumbent of Douville, a bald person, eloquent, fantastic, and a devotee of the table, who lives by the Rule of Brillat-Savarin, and who expounded to me in slightly sibylline language a loose pedagogy, while he fed me upon some admirable fried potatoes.” While Brichot smiled to show how witty it was to combine matters so dissimilar and to employ an ironically lofty diction in treating of commonplace things, Saniette was trying to find a loophole for some clever remark which would raise him from the abyss into which he had fallen. The witty remark was what was known as a “comparison,” but had changed its form, for there is an evolution in wit as in literary styles, an epidemic that disappears has its place taken by another, and so forth.⁠ ⁠… At one time the typical “comparison” was the “height of.⁠ ⁠…” But this was out of date, no one used it any more, there was only Cottard left to say still, on occasion, in the middle of a game of piquet: “Do you know what is the height of absentmindedness, it is to think that the Edict (