I was looking for motives.' Here is an outbreak of
jubilation, and a lot of men clustering together
About some new-
comer with outstretched hands; perhaps the 'correspondence' has
come in and brought So-and-so from Paris, or perhaps it is only So-
and-so who has walked over from Chailly to dinner.
'A table, Messieurs!' cries M. Siron, bearing through the court the
first tureen of soup. And immediately the company begins to settle
down about the long tables in the dining-room, framed all round
with sketches of all degrees of merit and demerit. There's the big
picture of the huntsman winding a horn with a dead boar between his
legs, and his legs - well, his legs in stockings. And here is the
little picture of a raw mutton-chop, in which Such-a-one knocked a
hole last summer with no worse a missile than a plum from the
dessert. And under all these works of art so much eating goes
forward, so much drinking, so much jabbering in French and English,
that it would do your heart good merely to peep and listen at the
door. One man is telling how they all went last year to the fete
at Fleury, and another how well so-and-so would sing of an evening:
and here are a third and fourth making plans for the whole future
of their lives; and there is a fifth imitating a conjurer and
making faces on his clenched fist, surely of all arts the most
difficult and admirable!
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