who was giving the dinner, but
his choice of restaurant could not convict him of originality, or of
sentiment either. But I do not know why I grumble when the dinner was so
good. The _Tour d'Argent_ had not fallen as most restaurants fall when
they attract patrons from across the Channel. Frederic's cooking was
beyond reproach. Even the theatrical ceremony over his pressed duck
could not spoil its flavour.

The sixth evening saw us at _Prunier's_, eating the oysters that it
would have been useless to go to _Prunier's_ and not to eat (we must
have been in Paris unusually early in May that year), and if it was not
the season to eat the snails for which _Prunier's_ is equally renowned,
my heart was not broken. It may give me away to confess that I do not
like them, since snails are one of the unconsidered trifles that no
Autolycus posing as _gourmet_ should turn a disdainful back upon. But
what can I do? It is a case of Dr. Fell, and that is the beginning and
end of it. And if it wasn't the season for snails, and if I wouldn't
have eaten them if it had been, in _Prunier's_ gilded halls other
delicacies are served, and when I summon up remembrance of those dinners
past, _Prunier's_ does not exactly take a back seat.

But naturally, the most important dinner in my opinion was mine at the
_Cabaret Lyonnais_ in the _Rue de Port-Mahon_, where never again can I
invite my friends, for the _Cabaret_ has gone into the land of shadows
with so many of the group who sat round my table. At the time, there was
no looking back, no sad straying into a dead past to spoil a good
dinner--at the worst, a fleeting moment of discomfort when we selected
the tench swimming in the tank close to our table and saw them carried
off to the kitchen to be cooked for us. It was the custom of the house,
intended to be a pleasing assurance that our fish was fresh, but a
custom with just a savour in it of cannibalism. I have never cared to be
on speaking terms with the creatures I am about to eat. I squirm when I
see the lobster for my salad squirming, though I know the risk if it
should not squirm at all. Had I lived in the country among my own
chickens and pigs and lambs, I should have been long since a confirmed
vegetarian. But to go to the _Cabaret Lyonnais_ unwilling to swallow my
scruples with my fish would have been as useless as to go to Simpson's
in London and object to a cut from the joint, as I do object, which is
why I seldom go. Anyway, we did