Jeannette Isabelle Volume 3; A Novel

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1837 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII. It was some days after the above ride of our hero from Paris to Montmorency, that a great dinner party happened to be given by our friend Mr. Earthstopper Brush Fivebars, to a number of Englishmen, at the Rocher de Cancale. Bob Tracy, who had managed not yet to get into St. Pelagie, was, of course, one of the principal features of the company, and a number of his old Oxford friends, whom he had chanced to pick up about Paris, were added to the party; Grainger also was there, but not Mullingham; and Fivebars, who since the duel had established an especial intimacy with his principal on that occasion, had been so successful as to prevail on Lord Clanelly, notwithstanding his general dislike of society, and his special reasons at the present moment against it, to be one of the guests. No legal process had been resorted to against him in consequence of the fatal duel; for, at the time we write of, such affairs were rather encouraged, than otherwise, by the authorities. "Ce ne sont que de mauvais sujets qui se battent," was one of the cunning maxims of Louis Philippe, and he thought it much better that the wild spirits of the capital should shoot each other in single combat, than that their pistols should be directed either against himself or his government. At table, on the present occasion, the excellency of Parisian cooks, and the importance and dignity of the culinary art in general, were dilated on with his usual eloquence and enthusiasm, by George Grainger. "I forget which of the kings of France it was," said he, "but I believe Henri Quatre, who being engaged in his wars on the eastern frontier of his dominions, and at the point furthest possible removed from the sea, suddenly took it into his head that he would have a turbot for dinner. The ...