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Thus far, for nearly a week, he had fed on biscuit only; but now, as he ate his repast, he began to think that it was a very monotonous fare, and to wonder whether it might not be possible to find something which could give a zest to his repasts.
The time had been taken up largely by his active reception of his own wedding-guests and by Maggie's scarce less absorbed entertainment of her friend, whom she had kept for hours together in Portland Place; whom she had not, as wouldn't have been convenient, invited altogether as yet to migrate, but who had been present, with other persons, his contingent, at luncheon, at tea, at dinner, at perpetual repasts he had never in his life, it struck him, had to reckon with so much eating whenever he had looked in.
The very echoes in this deserted hall seemed startled and amazed as they repeated and multiplied the unwonted sound of footsteps. A door near the head of the first flight of stairs opened into what had evidently been the great banqueting hall in the old days when sumptuous repasts and numerous guests were not uncommon things in the chateau.
In the place of pay, they are supplied with a daily table and repasts; though grossly prepared, yet very profuse. For maintaining such liberality and munificence, a fund is furnished by continual wars and plunder.
The fog was as thick as ever, the scene was monotonous, and there was nothing to do. Even Solomon's repasts had, in a great measure, lost their attractions. He had spread a dinner for them, which at other times, and under happier circumstances, would have been greeted with uproarious enthusiasm; but at the present time it was viewed with comparative indifference.
The shafts in this mine are not sunk perpendicularly, but are slightly inclined: the huge buckets, lowered and raised by means of powerful machinery, are but ancient caldrons, counterparts of those in which the weird witches in "Macbeth" might have brewed their unholy decoctions, or such as the dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours.
It is true the savages might plead that they drew all the benefits from the land which their simple wants required they found plenty of game to hunt, which, together with the roots and uncultivated fruits of the earth, furnished a sufficient variety for their frugal repasts; and that as Heaven merely designed the earth to form the abode and satisfy the wants of man, so long as those purposes were answered the will of Heaven was accomplished.
They alone, at a period of disorderly excess, had a dietary which begins to be generally recognized as hygienic; they ate coarse bread, fresh fruit, milk fresh from the cow, many vegetables, little meat, at frugal but regular repasts.
The afternoon and evening stretched before him, an arid and appalling Sahara. The Benbows, and their babes, and Auntie Hamps were coming for dinner and tea, to cheer up grandfather. He pictured the repasts with savage gloating detestation burnt ox, and more burnt ox, and the false odious brightness of a family determined to be mutually helpful and inspiring.
On that condition he ate well, and this jealousy lasted a long time, and drove Finot to despair by its duration; who, nevertheless, sometimes nearly died of laughter in relating to us what passed at these repasts, and the conversation from the other world heard there.
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