Page:Inside Canton.djvu/80

Rh nothing left but the tail, M. Renard took it, put it in his memorandum book, and preserved it as a reminiscence of the dinner. Of how many stories has not this tail been the subject in the hands of an old commercial traveller—of a witty commercial traveller?

I must charge myself with an act of baseness. I did all I could to make Pan understand that I did not like rats, but that M. de Lagrené was very fond of them, and that he ought to have some served up for him every day, because they were a kind of game very scarce in France. But Callery would not lend himself to the wicked joke. Thanks to this reserve on the part of our dear interpreter, M. de Lagrené was deprived of the pleasure of seeing these long-tailed rodents on his table.

But our host had a more agreeable surprise in store for us. When we came to the dessert, a flat dish, covered with a red lacquered cover, was placed on the table. On it was written:—"Kneaded and prepared in my house of mourning." Pan told us it contained cakes sent us by his thirteen wives. He took off the cover, and we admired a multitude of little cakes and small, fatty, sweet tit-bits, cut up with charming art. When we reflected that it was Pan's charming daughters and the wives, fragile and trembling as the foliage of the willow, of this intrepid husband, who had prepared, on purpose for