As might have been expected, these various forms are often combined in one person, and your genuine gourmand eats with all his senses. We need only keep our eyes open at a restaurant to observe that most persons show some trace of epicurism. Very few resist the temptation to follow the platter the waiter is carrying to some table. (Almost every one likes to see what his neighbour is eating.) We may be discussing art, politics, love, or what not, yet watch carefully how much the person serving is taking for himself or dishing out for the others, and how little he is leaving for us. Most of the time in these cases we are the victims of an optical deception. Our neighbour’s portion always seems bigger than ours. Hunger and envy magnify the other person’s portion and minimise ours. And is it not an everyday experience that we order what our neighbour is eating? “Waiter, what is that you served the man over there? Bring me the same!” How a person eats always reveals something of his hidden personality. In the case of most human beings at meals the same thing happens that one may observe at the menagerie during feeding-time: the peacefully reposing lion becomes a beast of prey. That is why beautiful women become ugly when they eat and lose their charm, cease to become interesting when they are seen eating. It is not a meaningless custom that we honour distinguished persons by dining them. By so doing we create a situation in which there is no superiority and in which we feel ourselves at one with the great man and on a level with him. Much more complicated than the psychology of the ordinary eater is that of the gourmand, who always seems even to himself to be an exceptional kind of person and who has in unsuspected ways enlarged the sphere of possible pleasures. In most of these cases we shall find that they are persons of whom life has demanded many renunciations. Just as the habitual drinker rarely stupifies himself because of the pleasure he takes in drinking but mostly out of a desire to drown in unconsciousness a great pain, to draw the veil over some humiliation, disillusionment, failure, or disappointment, so the gourmand likewise compensates himself for his lost world. He has the same right to the pleasures of life that others have. Well for him that he is capable of securing his portion in this way!