"I have been permitted, my lord, to send you some wines as accompaniments, because good dishes without good wines are like a beautiful woman without soul. Now, have you found these wines palatable, my lord?" "Palatable! Great God, what blasphemy! Inestimable samples of all known nectars--palatable! Wines whose value could not be paid, if you exchanged them, bottle for bottle, with liquid gold--palatable! Come now, my dear friend, your modesty is exaggerated, as you seemed a moment ago to exaggerate your immense talent. But I recognise the fact that, if your genius should be boasted to hyperbole, there would still remain more than half untold." "I have still more wine of this quality," said the cook, coldly; "for twenty-five years I have been preparing a tolerable cellar for myself." "But this tolerable cellar, my dear friend, must have cost you millions?" "It has cost me nothing, my lord." "Nothing." "They are all so many gifts to my humble merit." "I am by no means astonished, my dear friend, but what are you going to do with this cellar, which is rich enough to be the envy of a king? Ah, if you desired to surrender to me the whole, or a part of it, I would not hesitate to make any sacrifice for its possession; because, as you have just said with so much significance, good dishes without good wines are like a beautiful woman without soul. Now, these wines accompany your productions so admirably that--I--" The cook interrupted Dom Diégo with a sarcastic, sneering laugh. "You laugh, my friend?" said the canon, greatly surprised. "You laugh?" "Yes, my lord, I laugh." "And at what, my friend?" "At your gratitude to me, my lord canon." "My friend, I do not understand you." "Ah, Lord Dom Diégo! you believe that your good angel--and I picture him to myself, fat and chubby, dressed as I am, like a cook, and wearing pheasant wings on the back of his white robe!--ah, you believe, I say, my lord canon, that your good angel has sent me to you!" "My dear friend," said Dom Diégo, stretching his large eyes, and feeling very uncomfortable on account of the cook's sardonic humour, "my dear friend, I pray you, explain yourself clearly." "My lord canon, this day will prove a fatal one for you." "Great God! what do you say?" "My lord canon!" replied the cook, his arms crossed and his eyes fixed in a threatening manner on the canon. And he took a step toward Dom Diégo, who recoiled from him with an expression of pain. "My lord canon, look at me well." "I--I--am looking at you," stammered Dom Diégo, "but--" "My lord canon, my face shall pursue you everywhere, in your sleep and in your waking hours! You shall see me always before you, with my cotton cap and white jacket, like a terrible and fantastic apparition."