had just assisted the host to a splendid coup at the Bourse.

"Ah, _cher_ Monsieur Savarin," says Enguerrand de Vandemar, whose
patrician blood is so pure from revolutionary taint that he is always
instinctively polite, "what a masterpiece in its way is that little paper
of yours in the 'Sens Commun,' upon the connection between the national
character and the national diet! so genuinely witty!--for wit is but
truth made amusing."

"You flatter me," replied Savarin, modestly; "but I own I do think there
is a smattering of philosophy in that trifle. Perhaps, however, the
character of a people depends more on its drinks than its food. The
wines of Italy, heady, irritable, ruinous to the digestion, contribute to
the character which belongs to active brains and disordered livers. The
Italians conceive great plans, but they cannot digest them. The English
common-people drink beer, and the beerish character is stolid, rude, but
stubborn and enduring. The English middle-class imbibe port and sherry;
and with these strong potations their ideas become obfuscated. Their
character has no liveliness; amusement is not one of their wants; they
sit at home after dinner and doze away the fumes of their beverage in the
dulness of domesticity. If the English aristocracy are more vivacious
and cosmopolitan, it is thanks to the wines of France, which it is the
mode with them to prefer; but still, like all plagiarists, they are
imitators, not inventors; they borrow our wines and copy our manners.
The Germans--"

"Insolent barbarians!" growled the French Colonel, twirling his mustache;
"if the Emperor were not in his dotage, their Sadowa would ere this have
cost them their Rhine."