wich made of a mixture
of cold white puddings and garlic, of which I have forgotten the name,
and always detested the savor.

Gradually a conviction came upon me that Ottilia ATE A GREAT DEAL.

I do not dislike to see a woman eat comfortably. I even think that an
agreeable woman ought to be friande, and should love certain little
dishes and knick-knacks. I know that though at dinner they commonly take
nothing, they have had roast-mutton with the children at two, and laugh
at their pretensions to starvation.

No! a woman who eats a grain of rice, like Amina in the "Arabian
Nights," is absurd and unnatural; but there is a modus in rebus: there
is no reason why she should be a ghoul, a monster, an ogress, a horrid
gormandizeress--faugh!

It was, then, with a rage amounting almost to agony, that I found
Ottilia ate too much at every meal. She was always eating, and always
eating too much. If I went there in the morning, there was the horrid
familiar odor of those oniony sandwiches; if in the afternoon, dinner
had been just removed, and I was choked by reeking reminiscences of
roast-meat. Tea we have spoken of. She gobbled up more cakes than any
six people present; then came the supper and the sandwiches again, and
the egg-flip and the horrible rum-punch.

She was as thin as ever--paler if possible than ever:--but, by heavens!
HER NOSE BEGAN TO GROW RED!

Mon Dieu! how I used to watch and watch it! Some days it was purple,
some days had more of the vermilion--I could take an affidavit that
after a heavy night's supper it was more swollen, more red than before.

I recollect one night when we were playing a round game (I had been
looking at her nose very eagerly and sadly for some time), she of
herself brought up the conversation about eating, and confessed that she
had five meals a day.

"THAT ACCOUNTS FOR IT!" says I, flinging down the cards, and springing
up and rushing like a madman out of the room. I rushed away into the
night, and wrestled with my passion. "What! Marry," said I, "a woman who
eats meat twenty-one times in a week, besides breakfast and tea? Marry a
sarcophagus, a cannibal, a butcher's shop?--Away!" I strove and strove.
I drank, I groaned, I wrestled and fought with my love--but it overcame
me: one look of those eyes brought me to her feet again. I yielded
myself up like a slave; I fawned and whined for her; I thought her nose
was not so VERY red.

Things came to this pitch that I sounded his Hig