The Three Musketeers (The Modern Library) - Alexandre Dumas [174]
“By God, were I my cousin, I would not keep such a gluttonous crew! Why, they look like shipwrecked sailors who have been without food for six long weeks!”
Madame Coquenard rolled her husband in on a chair equipped with casters; Porthos helped her to trundle him up to the table. The lawyer had scarcely entered when he began to twitch his nostrils and exercise his jaws as the clerks had done.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, “here is a most inviting soup!”
“What the devil can they smell that is so extraordinary in this soup?” Porthos grumbled to himself as he looked down upon a pale bouillon, abundant but innocent of any meat, with, on its surface, some crusts floating as scarce as the islands of an archipelago!
Madame Coquenard smiled and, upon a sign from her, they all sat down eagerly. First Maître Coquenard was served, next Porthos; next Madame Coquenard filled her own plate, exhausting the bouillon; then the dampened crusts went to the impatient clerks. At this moment the dining-room door opened of itself with a creak; through the half-open leaves, Porthos caught sight of the errand-boy. Not permitted to partake of the feast, the stripling was nibbling at his bread in the hall, stationed strategically there in order to flavor it with the twin aromas of dining room and kitchen.
After soup the maid brought a boiled fowl, at which splendor the eyes of the diners bulged dangerously from their sockets.
“It is easy to see you love your family dearly, Madame,” the attorney observed with a smile almost tragic. “You are certainly treating your cousin to a rare feast.”
The wretched fowl was thin and covered with the type of coarse bristly skin which, sharp and thin though the bones are, remains impenetrable. Obviously someone had searched for the fowl long and assiduously ere finding it lurking on the perch to which it had retired to die of old age.
“This is sad indeed,” Porthos mused. “Heavens knows, I respect my elders, but I don’t think much of them served up to me boiled or roasted.”
Looking about him to see whether anyone shared his opinion, he was astounded to observe nothing but gleaming eyes devouring in anticipation that sublime fowl which was the object of his own contempt.
Madame Attorney drew the dish toward her . . . skilfully detached one black drumstick which she placed on her husband’s plate . . . cut off the neck which with the head she put aside for herself . . . lopped off a wing for Porthos . . . and returned the bird to the maid who bore it away virtually intact. . . . Maid and bird vanished before the musketeer found time to examine the variations which disappointment can mark upon the human countenance, according to the character and temperament of those who experience it.
A dish of haricot beans was ushered in to replace the fowl—an enormous dish from which peeped a few rare mutton bones that might be supposed at first glance to have some meat on them. But the clerks were not duped by this fraud; their lugubrious glances froze into an expression of resignation. Madame Coquenard distributed this delicacy to the young men with all the moderation of a shrewd housewife.
It was now time for the wine to appear. From a diminutive stone crock, Maître Coquenard poured a third of a glass for each of the young men and about the same quantity for himself, then passed the vessel along to Porthos and to Madame Coquenard. The clerks filled their glasses, adding two parts of aqua pura to the one part vouchsafed them. Whenever they had drunk half a glassful, they kept adding water. By the end of the meal, what had been a beverage of deep crimson turned to the palest topaz.
Very timidly, Porthos toyed with his chicken wing and shuddered