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A sister-in-law of the good Pauline was accustomed to send in our dinner, which consisted one day of a thimbleful of saffron-coloured pilau, while the next would perhaps bring half the shoulder of a small fish. Had I boarded with my hostess, I should have kept fast-day five days in the week, and have had nothing to eat on the remaining two.
"Did you know me better," returned the count, smiling, "you would not give one thought of such a thing for a traveller like myself, who has successively lived on maccaroni at Naples, polenta at Milan, olla podrida at Valencia, pilau at Constantinople, karrick in India, and swallows' nests in China.
We would greatly have preferred two good-sized dishes to all these kickshaws. The dishes were, a roast, a boiled, and a baked chicken, a little plate of prepared cucumbers, an equally small portion of this vegetable in a raw state, a little pilau, and a few small pieces of mutton.
I do not think that a better, or a more active, agile, and temperate race of sailors exists than these. Their fare consists of bread or ship-biscuit in the morning, with sometimes a raw cucumber, a piece of cheese, or a handful of dates in addition. For dinner they have the same diet, and for supper they have a dish of warm beans, or a kind of broth or pilau.
Some, however, ate the fat dishes without pilau; after each mouthful they wiped off the fat, which ran over their fingers, on the bread. They drank a great deal while eating, all using the same spoons. He then poured out a glass for me, and drank a couple himself one to my health and one to his own.
The French genius for the dramatic was quite at home in arranging that part of the display; and they did not allow the full effect to suffer for want of some artificial eking out. The kibaubs, pilau and sherbet that were served up in fine Oriental style were not in all cases prepared by Turks, Persians and Tunisians.
After stroking the dark burnished head of the bird, which rolled its eyes and stretched out its neck in terror, Lukashka took the pheasant in his hands. 'We'll have it in a pilau tonight. You go and kill and pluck it. 'And shall we eat it ourselves or give it to the corporal? 'He has plenty! 'I don't like killing them, said Nazarka. 'Give it here!
The first dish appeared in the form of a delicate pilau, composed of mutton, cucumbers, and a quantity of spice, which rendered it more unpalatable to me than common pilau. Then followed sliced cucumbers sprinkled with salt; but as the chief ingredients, vinegar and oil, were entirely wanting, I was obliged to force down the cucumber as best I could.
I like not to give them, and it is said, "Love is wither'd by the withered lip"; and that, "On bones become too prominent he'll trip." Yet put the case, that my kisses I shower them not, Allah the All-seeing is my witness! and they be given daintily as 'twere to the leaf of a nettle, or over-hot pilau.
I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading some French Memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed.
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