respect as the eye and the ear. A person who lacks this sense is deprived
of an exquisite faculty, the faculty of discerning the quality of food,
just as one may lack the faculty of discerning the beauties of a book or
of a work of art; it means to be deprived of an essential organ, of
something that belongs to higher humanity; it means to belong to one of
those innumerable classes of the infirm, the unfortunate, and the fools
of which our race is composed; it means to have the mouth of an animal,
in a word, just like the mind of an animal. A man who cannot distinguish
one kind of lobster from another; a herring--that admirable fish
that has all the flavors, all the odors of the sea--from a mackerel
or a whiting; and a Cresane from a Duchess pear, may be compared to a man
who should mistake Balzac for Eugene Sue; a symphony of Beethoven for a
military march composed by the bandmaster of a regiment; and the Apollo
Belvidere for the statue of General de Blaumont.

"Who is General de Blaumont?"

"Oh, that's true, you do not know. It is easy to tell that you do not
belong to Gisors. I told you just now, my dear boy, that they called the
inhabitants of this town 'the proud people of Gisors,' and never was an
epithet better deserved. But let us finish breakfast first, and then I
will tell you about our town and take you to see it."

He stopped talking every now and then while he slowly drank a glass of
wine which he gazed at affectionately as he replaced the glass on the
table.

It was amusing to see him, with a napkin tied around his neck, his cheeks
flushed, his eyes eager, and his whiskers spreading round his mouth as it
kept working.