After the bomb, came in a pike _au four_, to which, as is well known, the cutting away of the head and tail, and the closing up of the belly give the appearance of a roe's loin. When Albano asked his old teacher what it was, the latter replied, "A delicate roe's loin." "_Pardonnez, Monsieur_," said his rival gourmand, "_c'est du brochet au four, mon cher Compte; mais il est mésseant de demander le nom de quelque mets qu'il soit,--on feint de le savoir_." It is easy to show that this horizontal shot from a double rifle pierced through the Magister's marrow and bone; the _instruments of passion_ which lay in the cut-off head of the pike _au four_, as in an armory, continued to do their execution in his. Like most schoolmasters, he thought himself to have the finest manners, so long as he taught them, and fought against bad ones; so long he prized them uncommonly, just as he did his dress; but when he was outdone in either, then he must needs despise them from his heart. It brought him to his legs again that he was all the while silently comparing the master of accomplishments with the two Catos and Homer's heroes, who ate not much better than swine, and that he thus tied the Viennite to a pillory, and thrashed him most lustily thereon, with one hand, while with the other he rung above him the shame-bell. Yes, he placed himself, in order to make his official brother small, upon a distant planet, and looked down upon the bomb and the pike _au four_, and could not help laughing up there on his planet, to find that this yellow-silk shop-keeper of Nature, with his rubbish of brains, was no bigger than a paste-eel. Then he pitied his forsaken pupil, and so came down again, and swore on the way to weed as much out of him every day as that other fellow raked in.