Dinner is served; they do the honours of the table to the abbe--they place him at the upper end. I come in and see this. "What, abbe, you preside? That is all very well for to-day, but to-morrow you will come down, if you please, by one plate; the day after by another plate, and so on from plate to plate, now to right and now to left, until from the place that I occupied one time before you, Freron once after me, Dorat once after Freron, Palissot once after Dorat, you become stationary beside me, poor rascal as you are--_che siedo sempre come_"--[an Italian proverb not to be decently reproduced]. The abbe, who is a good fellow, and takes everything in good part, bursts out laughing; Mademoiselle, struck by my observation and by the aptness of my comparison, bursts out laughing; everybody to right and left burst out laughing, except the master of the house, who flies into a huff, and uses language that would have meant nothing if we had been by ourselves-- "Rameau, you are an impertinent." "I know I am, and it is on that condition that I was received here." "You are a scoundrel." "Like anybody else." "A beggar." "Should I be here, if I were not?" "I will have you turned out of doors." "After dinner I will go of my own will." "I recommend you to go." We dined: I did not lose a single toothful. After eating well and drinking amply, for after all Messer Gaster is a person with whom I have never sulked, I made up my mind what to do, and I prepared to go; I had pledged my word in presence of so many people that I was bound to keep it. For a considerable time I hunted up and down the room for my hat and cane in every corner where they were not likely to be, reckoning all the time that the master of the house would break out into a new torrent of injuries, that somebody would interpose, and that we should at last make friends by sheer dint of altercation. I turned on this side and that, for I had nothing on my heart; but the master, more sombre and dark-browed than Homer's Apollo as he lets his arrows fly among the Greeks, with his cap plucked farther over his head than usual, marched backwards and forwards up and down the room. Mademoiselle approaches me: "But, mademoiselle," say I, "what has happened beyond what happens every day? Have I been different from what I am on other days?"