"Prattle!" cried the canon, in despair. "What! here for eight days I have been able to swallow only a few spoonfuls of chocolate,--so faint, so disheartened am I. What! I have had the fortitude to pass two hours seated in the museums of Chevet and Bontoux, those famous cooks, hoping that perhaps the sight of their rare collections of comestibles would excite in me some desire of appetite,--and nothing, nothing. No, the recollection of that celestial breakfast was there, always there, annihilating everything by the sole power of a cherished memory. Ah, abbé, abbé, I have never loved, but since these three days I comprehend all that is exclusive in love; I comprehend how a man passionately in love remains indifferent to the sight of the most beautiful creature in the world, dreaming, alas!--three times alas!--only of the adored object which he regrets." "But, canon," said the abbé, looking at Dom Diégo with anxiety, "do you know that all this will result in delirium--in insanity?" "Eh, my God! I know it well, abbé, I am losing my head. This cursed seducer has carried away my life and thought with him. In the street, I gaze into the faces of all who pass, in the hope of meeting him. Great God! if this good luck would only happen! Oh, he would not be insensible to my prayers. 'Cruel, perfidious man,' I would say, 'look at me. See on my features the mark of my sufferings! Will you be without pity? No, no; mercy, mercy!'" And the canon, falling back in his armchair, covered his face with his hands and burst into sobs. "My God! my God! how wretched I am!" he cried. "What a double brute! He will be a fool, if he is not one already," said the abbé to himself. "I will not complain of it, because, his insanity once established, he will not leave our house, and whether it is he or his niece little matters." The abbé approached the canon with compunction, and said to him, gently: "Come, my brother, be reasonable, calm yourself, perhaps we ought to see in what has happened the punishment of Heaven." "I think with you, abbé, this tempter came from hell. It is not given to any human being to be such a cook. Ah, abbé, I must be a great sinner, for my punishment is terrible!" "You have indeed surrendered yourself, without measure, without restraint, to one of the foulest of the capital sins,--gluttony, my dear brother,--and I repeat to you Heaven punishes you, as is its law, in the very thing by which you have sinned." "But after all, what is my crime? I have simply used the admirable gifts of the Creator, for in fact it is not I who, in order to enjoy them, have created pheasants, ortolans, fat livers, salmon trout, truffles, oysters, lobsters, wines, and--"