I do not dislike to see a woman eat comfortably. I even think that an agreeable woman ought to be friande, and should love certain little dishes and knick-knacks. I know that though at dinner they commonly take nothing, they have had roast-mutton with the children at two, and laugh at their pretensions to starvation.
No! a woman who eats a grain of rice, like Amina in the "Arabian Nights," is absurd and unnatural; but there is a modus in rebus: there is no reason why she should be a ghoul, a monster, an ogress, a horrid gormandizeress--faugh!
It was, then, with a rage amounting almost to agony, that I found Ottilia ate too much at every meal. She was always eating, and always eating too much. If I went there in the morning, there was the horrid familiar odor of those oniony sandwiches; if in the afternoon, dinner had been just removed, and I was choked by reeking reminiscences of roast-meat. Tea we have spoken of. She gobbled up more cakes than any six people present; then came the supper and the sandwiches again, and the egg-flip and the horrible rum-punch.
She was as thin as ever--paler if possible than ever:--but, by heavens! HER NOSE BEGAN TO GROW RED!
Mon Dieu! how I used to watch and watch it! Some days it was purple, some days had more of the vermilion--I could take an affidavit that after a heavy night's supper it was more swollen, more red than before.
I recollect one night when we were playing a round game (I had been looking at her nose very eagerly and sadly for some time), she of herself brought up the conversation about eating, and confessed that she had five meals a day.
"THAT ACCOUNTS FOR IT!" says I, flinging down the cards, and springing up and rushing like a madman out of the room. I rushed away into the night, and wrestled with my passion. "What! Marry," said I, "a woman who eats meat twenty-one times in a week, besides breakfast and tea? Marry a sarcophagus, a cannibal, a butcher's shop?--Away!" I strove and strove. I drank, I groaned, I wrestled and fought with my love--but it overcame me: one look of those eyes brought me to her feet again. I yielded myself up like a slave; I fawned and whined for her; I thought her nose was not so VERY red.
Things came to this pitch that I sounded his Highness's Minister to know whether he would give me service in the Duchy; I thought of purchasing an estate there. I was given to understand that I should get a chamberlain's key and some post of honor did I choose to remain, and I even wrote home to my brother Tom in England, hinting a change in my condition.
At this juncture the town of Hamburg sent his Highness the Grand Duke (apropos of a commercial union which was pending between the two States) a singular present: no less than a certain number of barrels of oysters, which are considered extreme luxuries in Germany, especially in the inland parts of the country, where they are almost unknown.
In honor of the oysters and the new commercial treaty (which arrived in fourgons despatched for the purpose), his Highness announced a grand supper and ball, and invited all the quality of all the principalities round about. It was a splendid affair: the grand saloon brilliant with hundreds of uniforms and brilliant toilettes--not the least beautiful among them, I need not say, was Ottilia.
At midnight the supper-rooms were thrown open and we formed into little parties of six, each having a table, nobly served with plate, a lackey in attendance, and a gratifying ice-pail or two of champagne to egayer the supper. It was no small cost to serve five hundred people on silver, and the repast was certainly a princely and magnificent one.
I had, of course, arranged with Mademoiselle de Schlippenschlopp.
Captains Frumpel and Fridelberger of the Duke's Guard, Mesdames de Butterbrod and Bopp, formed our little party.
The first course, of course, consisted of THE OYSTERS. Ottilia's eyes gleamed with double brilliancy as the lackey opened them.
There were nine apiece for us--how well I recollect the number!
I never was much of an oyster-eater, nor can I relish them in naturalibus as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.
By the time I had made my preparations, Ottilia, the Captains, and the two ladies, had wellnigh finished theirs. Indeed Ottilia had gobbled up all hers, and there were only my nine in the dish.
I took one--IT WAS BAD. The scent of it was enough,--they were all bad. Ottilia had eaten nine bad oysters.
I put down the horrid shell. Her eyes glistened more and more; she could not take them off the tray.
"Dear Herr George," she said, "WILL YOU GIVE ME YOUR OYSTERS?"
. . . . . .
She had them all down--before--I could say--Jack--Robinson!
I left Kalbsbraten that night, and have never been there since.