"_Kellner_!" said the silver-gray, making a grand rattle among the
plates and glasses, "some wine! some water! some ink! an omelette! a
writing-pad! a _filet à la Chabrillant_!"

The last-named dish is one which Sciolists are perpetually calling
_filet à la Chateaubriand_, saddling the poetic defender of
Christianity with an invention in cookery of which he was never
capable. I approved the new-comer, who was writing half a dozen notes
with his mouth full, for his nicety in nomenclature: to get the right
term, even in kitchen affairs, shows a reflective mind and tenderness
of conscience. My friend the engineer arrived, and placed himself in
the chair I had turned up beside my own. I was ashamed of the rate at
which I advanced through my capon, but I recollected that Anne Boleyn,
when she was a maid of honor, used to breakfast off a gallon of ale
and a chine of beef.

My canal-maker interrupted me with a sudden appeal. "Listen--listen
yonder," he said, jogging my knee, "it is very amusing. He is in a
high vein to-day."

The gray coat, who had already directed four or five letters, and was
cleaning his middle finger with a lemon over the glass bowl, had just
opened a lofty geographical discussion with the bluebottle. I cannot
express how eagerly I, as a theorist of some pretension in Comparative
Geography, awoke to a discussion in which my dearest opinions were
concerned.

"Geography," the active gentleman was saying as he dipped his finger
in water to attach the flaps of his envelopes--"geography, my dear