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Antoine, mon enfant, we know thee to be a fellow of incontestible veracity, and thy list is magnificent; but we will be content with a vol-au-vent of fish, a bifteck aux pommes frites, an omelette sucrée, and a bottle of thy 1840 Bordeaux with the yellow seal. Now vanish!" The waiter, wearing an expression of intense relief, vanished accordingly.

To sink into those wide feather beds and sleep the round of the clock while the old women washed and dried their clothes for them; to eat rabbit stew and pommes frites in the garden, rabbit stew made with red wine and chestnuts. Oh, the days that are no more!

It was not beyond his vocabulary to explain that "Les pommes de terre frites are absolument all right if only madame will tenir ses cheveux on."

The clock points to eleven. The sun is high now. The vendors awaken to the consciousness of hunger, and Madame of the pommes frites stall, whose assistant dexterously cuts the peeled tubers into strips, is fully occupied in draining the crisp golden shreds from the boiling fat and handing them over, well sprinkled with salt and pepper, to avid customers, who devour them smoking hot, direct from their paper cornucopias.

We have eaten our last bif-teck aux pommes frites, and drank our last cup of coffee in the Saxe. I have had my last look at the familiar square, at the great dome of the Frauen Kirchen, at the high houses with their dormer-windows, at the ugly big statue standing with its stiff black back rudely turned to the hotel, at the piled hay-carts. We are really and truly off.

All Paris will throng to your fêtes next Sunday and Monday all Paris, with its inexhaustible appetite for bifteck aux pommes frites all Paris with its unquenchable thirst for absinthe and Bavarian beer! Now, Monsieur Choucru, do you begin to understand me?" "Mais, Monsieur, I I think...." "You think you do, Monsieur Choucru? Very good. Then will you please to answer me one more question.

You then promenade the quarter-deck, until the black steward arrests your progress grins in your face, and announces breakfast. Down you go, and fall foul of ham, beef, pommes de terre frites, jonny-cakes, and café sans lait; and generally, in despite of bad cooking and occasional lee-lurches, contrive to eat an enormous meal.