l the windows in a
street, each one of them interests you and puzzles you more than a whole
street in Paris.

"A little town is very amusing, you know, very amusing, very amusing.
Why, take Gisors. I know it at the tips of my fingers, from its
beginning up to the present time. You have no idea what queer history it
has."

"Do you belong to Gisors?"

"I? No. I come from Gournay, its neighbor and rival. Gournay is to
Gisors what Lucullus was to Cicero. Here, everything is for glory; they
say 'the proud people of Gisors.' At Gournay, everything is for the
stomach; they say 'the chewers of Gournay.' Gisors despises Gournay, but
Gournay laughs at Gisors. It is a very comical country, this."

I perceived that I was eating something very delicious, hard-boiled eggs
wrapped in a covering of meat jelly flavored with herbs and put on ice
for a few moments. I said as I smacked my lips to compliment Marambot:

"That is good."

He smiled.

"Two things are necessary, good jelly, which is hard to get, and good
eggs. Oh, how rare good eggs are, with the yolks slightly reddish, and
with a good flavor! I have two poultry yards, one for eggs and the other
for chickens. I feed my laying hens in a special manner. I have my own
ideas on the subject. In an egg, as in the meat of a chicken, in beef,
or in mutton, in milk, in everything, one perceives, and ought to taste,
the juice, the quintessence of all the food on which the animal has fed.
How much better food we could have if more attention were paid to this!"

I laughed as I said:

"You are a gourmand?"

"Parbleu. It is only imbeciles who are not. One is a gourmand as one is
an artist, as one is learned, as one is a poet. The sense of taste, my
friend, is very delicate, capable of perfection, and quite as worthy
of respect as the eye and the ear. A person who lacks this sense is
deprived of an exquisite faculty, the faculty of discerning the quality
of food, just as one may lack the faculty of discerning the beauties
of a book or of a work of art; it means to be deprived of an essential
organ, of something that belongs to higher humanity; it means to belong
to one of those innumerable classes of the infirm, the unfortunate, and
the fools of which our race is composed; it means to have the mouth of
an animal, in a word, just like the mind of an animal. A man who cannot
distinguish one kind of lobster from another; a herring--that admirable
fish that has all the flavors, all th