rrassment of a schoolboy
suddenly called on to locate a Minor Prophet in the tangled hinterland
of the Old Testament, by others with the severe scrutiny which suggests
that they have visited most of the higher-priced wines in their own
homes and probed their family weaknesses. The diners who chose their
wine in the latter fashion always gave their orders in a penetrating
voice, with a plentiful garnishing of stage directions. By insisting
on having your bottle pointing to the north when the cork is being
drawn, and calling the waiter Max, you may induce an impression on your
guests which hours of laboured boasting might be powerless to achieve.
For this purpose, however, the guests must be chosen as carefully as
the wine.

"Standing aside from the revellers in the shadow of a massive pillar
was an interested spectator who was assuredly of the feast, and yet not
in it. Monsieur Aristide Saucourt was the CHEF of the Grand Sybaris
Hotel, and if he had an equal in his profession he had never
acknowledged the fact. In his own domain he was a potentate, hedged
around with the cold brutality that Genius expects rather than excuses
in her children; he never forgave, and those who served him were
careful that there should be little to forgive. In the outer world,
the world which devoured his creations, he was an influence; how
profound or how shallow an influence he never attempted to guess. It
is the penalty and the safeguard of genius that it computes itself by
troy weight in a world that measures by vulgar hundredweights.

"Once in a way the great man would be seized with a desire to watch the
effect of his master-efforts, just as the guiding brain of Krupp's
might wish at a supreme moment to intrude into the firing line of an
artillery duel. And such an occasion was the present. For the first
time in the history of the Grand Sybaris Hotel, he was presenting to
its guests the dish which he had brought to that pitch of perfection
which almost amounts to scandal. Canetons a la mode d'Ambleve. In
thin gilt lettering on the creamy white of the menu how little those
words conveyed to the bulk of the imperfectly educated diners. And yet
how much specialized effort had been lavished, how much carefully
treasured lore had been ungarnered, before those six words could be
written. In the Department of Deux-Sevres ducklings had lived peculiar
and beautiful lives and died in the odour of satiety to furnish the
main theme of