nbiased. Therefore I ask
him: has one the right to spoil a Bambara cook by addling his head
with theological discussions for which he has no predisposition?"

"Alas!" the pastor replied sadly. "You are mistaken. He has only too
strong a propensity to controversy."

"Koukou is a good-for-nothing who uses Colas' cow as an excuse for
doing nothing and letting our scallops burn," declared the Hetman.
"Long live the Pope!" he cried, filling the glasses all around.

"I assure you that this Bambara worries me," Spardek went on with
great dignity. "Do you know what he has come to? He denies
transubstantiation. He is within an inch of the heresy of Zwingli and
Oecolampades. Koukou denies transubstantiation."

"Sir," said Le Mesge, very much excited, "cooks should be left in
peace. Jesus, whom I consider as good a theologian as you, understood
that, and it never occurred to him to call Martha away from her oven
to talk nonsense to her."

"Exactly so," said the Hetman approvingly.

He was holding a jar between his knees and trying to draw its cork.

"Oh, Cotes Roties, wines from the Cote-Rotie!" he murmured to me as he
finally succeeded. "Touch glasses."

"Koukou denies transubstantiation," the pastor continued, sadly
emptying his glass.

"Eh!" said the Hetman of Jitomir in my ear, "let them talk on. Don't
you see that they are quite drunk?"

His own voice was thick. He had the greatest difficulty in the world
in filling my goblet to the brim.

I wanted to push the pitcher away. Then an idea came to me:

"At this very moment, Morhange.... Whatever he may say.... She is so
beautiful."

I reached out for the glass and emptied it once more.

Le Mesge and the pastor were now engaged in the most extraordinary
religious controversy, throwing at each other's heads the Book of
Common Prayer, The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the
Unigenitus. Little by little, the Hetman began to show that ascendancy
over them, which is the characteristic of a man of the world even when
he is thoroughly drunk; the superiority of education over instruction.

Count Bielowsky had drunk five times as much as the Professor or the
pastor. But he carried his wine ten times better.

"Let us leave these drunken fellows," he said with disgust. "Come on,
old man. Our partners are waiting in the gaming room."

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the Hetman as we entered. "Permit me to
present a new player to you, my friend, Lieutenant de Saint-Avi