"In the first place, you are a glutton, like Vitellius, Lucullus, the Prince of Soubise, Talleyrand, D'Aigrefeuille, Cambacérès, and Brillat-Savarin all together." "A flatterer always! You reproach me for my only great and lofty quality." "Ah, come now, doctor, do you take me for an oyster with your frivolous talk?" "Take you for an oyster? How conceited you are! Unfortunately, I cannot make a comparison so advantageous to you, abbé. It would be a heresy, an anachronism. Good oysters (and others are not counted as existing) do not give the right to discuss them until about the middle of November, and we are by no means there." "This, doctor, may be very witty, but it does not convince me in the least that gluttony is, in you or any other person, a quality." "I will convince you of it." "You?" "I, my dear abbé." "That would be rather difficult. And how?" "Give me your evening on the twentieth of November and I will prove that--" But interrupting himself, the doctor added: "Come now, my dear abbé, what are you constantly looking at there by the side of that door?" The holy man, thus taken unawares, blushed to his ears, for he had listened to the doctor with distraction, impatiently turning his eyes toward the door as if he expected a person who had not arrived; but after the first moment of surprise the abbé did not seem disconcerted, and replied: "What door do you speak of, doctor? I do not know what you mean." "I mean that you frequently look on this side as if you expected the appearance of some one." "There is no one in the world, dear doctor, except you, who could have such ideas. I was entirely absorbed in your sophistical but intelligent conversation." "Ah, abbé, abbé, you overwhelm me!" "You wish, in a word, doctor, to prove to me that gluttony is a noble, sublime passion, do you not?" "Sublime, abbé, that is the word, sublime,--if not in itself at least in its consequences; above all, in the interest of agriculture and commerce." "Come, doctor, that is a paradox. Agriculture and commerce are sustained as other things are." "It is not a paradox, it is a fact, yes, a fact, and if it is demonstrated to you positively, mathematically, practically, and economically, what can you say? Will you still doubt it?" "I will doubt, or rather I will believe this abomination less than ever." "How, in spite of evidence, abbé?" "Because of evidence, if so be that this evidence can ever exist, for it is by just such means of these pretended evidences, these perfidious appearances, that the bad spirit leads us into the most dangerous snares." "What, abbé, the devil! I am not a seminarian whom you are preparing to take the bands. You are a man of mind and of knowledge. When I talk reason to you, talk reason to me, and not of the devil and his horns." "But, pagan, idolater that you are, do you not know that gluttony is perhaps the most abominable of the seven capital sins?"