“Heavens!” he said, helping himself to sterlet with an unstinting hand, “what can be nicer than a nice little home like this? A fig for the Petersburg palace, where one dines on an island of carpet in the midst of a parquet the limits of which are lost in dim distances--or the terrifyingly spacious banqueting-hall of Palitzinovna, that I dearly love in spite of its colossal proportions. No!” he lyrically declaimed. “Give me a tiny room, a crust of bread, a goblet of _vin-ordinaire_ with peace and amity as sauces, and the plenitude of my sybaritism knows no bounds! By the way, what have we got to-night?” he continued, glancing at the little alabaster menu before his plate. “Ah! _canapés Impératrice_, _consommé froid_, _sterlet au naturel_--but-- Bah! These are already things of the past.... And to come...? _Poularde du mans aux truffes blanches_--Excellent! _Salade de crésson à l’orange_--Yum, yum! _Gelée d’ananas frais_--etc., etc.! That’s just what I was saying, an unobtrusive meal--all green and white and subdued tints against all the rules of gastronomic _bienséance_--green and white just like the ivy enthroned above our heads. Bravo, Tatiana! You are a positive genius, and so’s your _chef-de-cuisine_! Poetic I assure you--these _demi-teintes_, and so fittingly underscored by those harmonious names, _Chablis_ and _Chambertin_; the very tinkle of epicurianism with a final exclamation-point of quite enormous vividness. _Kümmel_--one imperceptible glasslet, not before, but after the frugal repast--an innovation of mine own!” “My good Jean,” Tatiana protested in French, “assuredly your exuberance can only mask some terrible revelation or other that you keep for your after-_Kümmel_ moment. I am always expecting a slate on the head when you are so gay before the roast.” “Which only shows how cruelly misunderstood I am by the wife of my bosom,” he mocked. “Pavlo, I take you to witness that your angel-mother is casting aspersions upon the immaculate purity of my mood that is to be.” Pavlo grinned. “Well, sir,” he said, “personally I suspect that dark clouds are gathering somewhere with or without your knowledge. Myself, I feel in the air an elusive but none the less convincing sense of coming thunder. Will it burst north, south, east, or west? Of course, not being much of a seer, I cannot tell, but it is there somewhere; pregnant with eventualities--perhaps only of ‘summer lightning,’ but I rather doubt that.” “Hush!” exclaimed Tatiana. “Don’t joke about more eventualities. We have had quite enough of them lately; betides, you both know that I am desperately superstitious.” “A weakness which is the only flaw in your armor,” observed Salvières.