CHAPTER VII

Dinner and Thoughts on Food


We found in the dining-room a table laid for three, where M.
d'Asterac made us take our places.

Criton, who acted as butler, served us with jellies, and thick soup
strained a dozen times. But we could not see any joints. As well as
we could, my kind tutor and myself tried to hide our surprise. M.
d'Asterac guessed it and said:

"Gentlemen, this is only an attempt, and may seem to you an
unfortunate one. I shall not persist in it. I'll have some more
customary dishes served for you and I shall not disdain to partake
of them. If the dishes I offer you to-day are badly prepared, it is
less the fault of my cook than that of chemistry, which is still in
its infancy. But they will at all events give you an idea of what
will be in the future. At present men eat without philosophy. They
do not nourish themselves like reasonable beings. They do not think
of such. But of what are they thinking? Most of them live in
stupidity and actually those who are capable of reflection occupy
their minds with silly things like controversies and poetry.
Consider mankind, gentlemen, at their meals since the far-away times
when they ceased their intercourse with Sylphs and Salamanders.
Abandoned by the genii of the air they grew heavy and dull in
ignorance and barbarity Without policy and without art they lived,
nude and miserable, in caverns, on the border of torrents or in the