And now, leaving the fish, we come to the _pièce de resistance_ of the dinner, called the _relévé_. No Frenchman will ever willingly cook a ladies’ dinner and give anything coarser or heavier than a _filet de bœuf_. He will do it, if he has to, of course, but he will think you a barbarian if you order him to do it. I eschew the mushroom and confine myself to the truffle in the treatment of the _filet_. I oftentimes have a _filet à la mœlle de bœuf_, or _à la jardinière_. In the fall of the year, turkey _poults à la Bordelaise_, or _à la Toulouse_, or a saddle of Southdown mutton or lamb, are a good substitute. Let me here say that the American turkey, as found on Newport Island, all its feathers being jet black and its diet grasshoppers, is exceptionally fine. Now for the _entrées_. In a dinner of twelve or fourteen, one or two hot _entrées_ and one cold is sufficient. If you use the truffle with the _filet_, making a black sauce, you must follow it with a white sauce, as a _riz de veau à la Toulouse_, or a _suprême de volaille_; then a _chaud-froid_, say of _pâté de foie gras en Bellevue_, which simply means _pâté de foie gras_ incased in jelly. Then a hot vegetable, as artichokes, sauce _Barigoule_, or _Italienne_, or asparagus, sauce _Hollandaise_. Then your _sorbet_, known in France as _la surprise_, as it is an ice, and produces on the mind the effect that the dinner is finished, when the grandest dish of the dinner makes its appearance in the shape of the roast canvasbacks, woodcock, snipe, or truffled capons, with salad. I must be permitted a few words of and about this _sorbet_. It should never be flavored with rum. A true Parisian _sorbet_ is simply “_punch à la Toscane_,” flavored with _Maraschino_ or bitter almonds; in other words, a homœopathic dose of prussic acid. Then the _sorbet_ is a digestive, and is intended as such. _Granit_, or water ice, flavored with rum, is universally given here. Instead of aiding digestion, it impedes it, and may be dangerous. A Russian salad is a pleasing novelty at times, and is more attractive if it comes in the shape of a _Macedoine de legumes_, Camembert cheese, with a biscuit, with which you serve your Burgundy, your old Port, or your Johannisberg, the only place in the dinner where you can introduce this latter wine. A genuine Johannisberg, I may say here, by way of parenthesis, is rare in this country, for if obtained at the Chateau, it is comparatively a dry wine; if it is, as I have often seen it, still lusciously sweet after having been here twenty years or more, you may be sure it is not a genuine Chateau wine. The French always give a hot pudding, as pudding _suedoise_, or a _croute au Madère_, or _ananas_, but I always omit this dish to shorten the dinner. Then come your ices. The fashion now is to make them very ornamental, a _cornucopia_ for instance, but I prefer a _pouding Nesselrode_, the best of all the ices if good cream is used. MADEIRAS. CHAPTER XX.