There were several side-dishes on the table, containing what appeared to be the ordinary French rabbit—a very delicious morceau , which I can recommend.
“Pierre,” cried the host, “change this gentleman’s plate, and give him a side-piece of this rabbit au-chat .”
“This what?” said I.
“This rabbit au-chat .”
“Why, thank you—upon second thoughts, no. I will just help myself to some of the ham.”
There is no knowing what one eats, thought I to myself, at the tables of these people of the province. I will have none of their rabbit au-chat —and, for the matter of that, none of their cat-au-rabbit either.
“And then,” said a cadaverous looking personage, near the foot of the table, taking up the thread of the conversation where it had been broken off—“and then, among other oddities, we had a patient, once upon a time, who very pertinaciously maintained himself to be a Cordova cheese, and went about, with a knife in his hand, soliciting his friends to try a small slice from the middle of his leg.”
“He was a great fool, beyond doubt,” interposed someone, “but not to be compared with a certain individual whom we all know, with the exception of this strange gentleman. I mean the man who took himself for a bottle of champagne, and always went off with a pop and a fizz, in this fashion.”
Here the speaker, very rudely, as I thought, put his right thumb in his left cheek, withdrew it with a sound resembling the popping of a cork, and then, by a dexterous movement of the tongue upon the teeth, created a sharp hissing and fizzing, which lasted for several minutes, in imitation of