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From the conversation I am listening to at this moment, I gather that the members of a judicial tribunal are travelling with me. They are not gifted persons. The merchants, who put in their word from time to time seem, however, intelligent. One comes across fearfully rich people. Sterlets are cheaper than mushrooms; you soon get sick of them. What more is there for me to write about?
At midday or in the evening I visited the most noted traktirs, and made the acquaintance of the caviar, sturgeons, sterlets, and other native delicacies for which these institutions are famous deafened the while by the deep tones of the colossal barrel-organ, out of all proportion to the size of the room; and in order to see how the common people spent their evenings I looked in at some of the more modest traktirs, and gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, at the enormous quantity of weak tea which the inmates consumed.
Rakitin related afterwards that there were five dishes: fish-soup made of sterlets, served with little fish patties; then boiled fish served in a special way; then salmon cutlets, ice pudding and compote, and finally, blanc-mange. Rakitin found out about all these good things, for he could not resist peeping into the kitchen, where he already had a footing.
After the sterlets had melted away to their backbones, and the roasted geese had shrunk into drumsticks and breastplates, and here and there a guest's ears began to redden with more rapid blood, Prince Alexis judged that the time for diversion had arrived.
But the best catches were made with the drag-nets, which brought up at each haul carp, bream, salmon, saltwater pike, and a number of medium-sized sterlets, which wealthy gourmets have sent alive to Astrakhan, Moscow, and Petersburg, and which now passed direct from their natural element into the cook's kettle without any charge for transport.
"Just so. Now, M. Danglars, ask these gentlemen where they are caught." "Sterlets," said Chateau-Renaud, "are only found in the Volga." "And," said Cavalcanti, "I know that Lake Fusaro alone supplies lampreys of that size." "Exactly; one comes from the Volga, and the other from Lake Fusaro." "Impossible!" cried all the guests simultaneously. "Well, this is just what amuses me," said Monte Cristo.
In the tank flapped and swam four superb sterlets, their ridgy backs rising out of the water like those of alligators. Great applause welcomed this new and classical adaptation of the old custom of showing the LIVING fish, before cooking them, to the guests at the table.
"We can't have less yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said he, bending down a finger. "Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward. "Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh, Dmitri!
Occasionally especially on the occasion of a marriage or a death in the family he will give magnificent banquets, and expend enormous sums on gigantic sterlets, choice sturgeons, foreign fruits, champagne, and all manner of costly delicacies. But this lavish, ostentatious expenditure does not affect the ordinary current of his daily life.
He had a rather deep bass voice. The dinner was magnificent; there were sturgeons, sterlets, bustards, asparagus, quail, partridges, mushrooms. The flavour of all these dishes supplied an irrefutable proof of the sobriety of the cook during the twenty-four hours preceding the dinner.
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