Page:The Czar, A Tale of the Time of the First Napleon.djvu/296

286 matters for the credit of his country. The enterprising Parisian restaurateur, having secured the services of a celebrated French chef de cuisine whom the war had deprived of his lucrative situation in the establishment of a Russian millionnaire, was able to set before his numerous Russian guests just such a banquet as would have awaited them at the table of a Tolstoi, a Narischkin, a Dolgorouki.

The dinner went merrily forward. The names of the dishes were strange, but their quality was unexceptionable. Amongst other specialties, a delicate fish soup gained the approbation of the party, although Ivan lamented that it could only be made in perfection of the sterlet, not to be found anywhere except in the waters of the Oka, the river near which he had spent his childhood. Emile devoted himself assiduously to certain delicious chicken cutlets called "Côtelettes à la Pojarsky" in honour of Ivan's heroic ancestor; although, when he heard the name, he somewhat ungallantly sought to dissuade Clémence from partaking of them. Rare wines, flavoured with peaches, apricots, and prunes, accompanied the little banquet; and the fruits, ices, and confectionery were voted perfectly "ravishing" by Emile and Stéphanie, nor did any one dispute their verdict.

It would have been well if Ivan's guests had been equally harmonious upon other subjects. But it was impossible, in a crisis like the present, not to talk of public events, and just as impossible to talk of them without differences of opinion. The party consisted of three ardent Legitimists, a Buonapartist, a Russian devoted to his Czar, and a clever, observant child, whose sole political creed as yet was that everything done in the world ought to contribute to the amusement and gratification of Stéphanie de Sartines.

Ivan's ideas of politeness, perhaps a little overstrained, led him to say everything he could think of in praise of Paris; and M. de Sartines replied by a tribute to the magnanimity of the conqueror, who spared the splendid city when it lay at his