“The man who cannot digest,” said the count, in a low clear voice. Then he bent down his head over the morsel of food on his plate, as though he were desirous of hiding a tear. “The man who cannot digest!” As he repeated the words he raised his head again, and looked round at all their faces.
“Yes, yes;—mein Gott, yes,” said Schmoff, and even he appeared as though he were almost moved from the deep quietude of his inward indifference.
“Ah; talk of blessings! What a blessing is digestion!” said the count. “I do not know whether you have ever thought of it, Captain Boodle? You are young, and perhaps not. Or you, Mr. Clavering? It is a subject worthy of your thoughts. To digest! Do you know what it means? It is to have the sun always shining, and the shade always ready for you. It is to be met with smiles, and to be greeted with kisses. It is to hear sweet sounds, to sleep with sweet dreams, to be touched ever by gentle, soft, cool hands. It is to be in paradise. Adam and Eve were in paradise. Why? Their digestion was good. Ah! then they took liberties, eat bad fruit—things they could not digest. They what we call, ruined their constitutions, destroyed their gastric juices, and then they were expelled from paradise by an angel with a flaming sword. The angel with the flaming sword, which turned two ways, was indigestion! There came a great indigestion upon the earth because the cooks were bad, and they called it a deluge. Ah, I thank God there is to be no more deluges. All the evils come from this. Macbeth could not sleep. It was the supper, not the murder. His wife talked and walked. It was the supper again. Milton had a bad digestion because he is always so cross; and your Carlyle must have the worst digestion in the world, because he never says any good of anything. Ah, to digest is to be happy! Believe me, my friends, there is no other way not to be turned out of paradise by a fiery two-handed turning sword.”
“It is true,” said Schmoff; “yes, it is true.”
“I believe you,” said Doodles. “And how well the count describes it, don’t he, Mr. Clavering? I never looked at it in that light; but, after all, digestion is everything. What is a horse worth, if he won’t feed?”
“I never thought much about it,” said Harry.
“That is very good,” said the great preacher. “Not to think about it ever is the best thing in the world. You will be made to think about it if there be necessity. A friend of mine told me he did not know whether he had a digestion. My friend, I said, you are like the husbandmen; you do not know your own blessings. A bit more steak, Mr. Clavering; see, it has come up hot, just to prove that you have the blessing.”
There was a pause in the conversation for a minute or two, during which Schmoff and Doodles were very busy giving the required proof; and the count was leaning back in his chair, with a smile of conscious wisdom on his face, looking as though he were in deep consideration of the subject on which he had just spoken with so much eloquence. Harry did not interrupt the silence, as, foolishly, he was allowing his mind to carry itself away from the scene of enjoyment that was present, and trouble itself with the coming battle which he would be obliged to fight with the count. Schmoff was the first to speak. “When I was eating a horse at Hamboro’—” he began.
“Schmoff,” said the count, “if we allow you to get behind the ramparts of that besieged city, we shall have to eat that horse for the rest of the evening. Captain Boodle, if you will believe me, I eat that horse once for two hours. Ah, here is the port wine. Now, Mr. Clavering, this is the wine for cheese;—’34. No man should drink above two glasses of ’34. If you want port after that, then have ’20.”
Schmoff had certainly been hardly treated. He had scarcely spoken a word during dinner, and should, I think, have been allowed to say something of the flavour of the horse. It did not, however, appear from his countenance that he had felt, or that he resented the interference; though he did not make any further attempt to enliven the conversation.
They did not sit long over their wine, and the count, in spite of what he had said about the claret, did not drink any. “Captain Boodle,” he said, “you must respect my weakness as well as my strength. I know what I can do, and what I cannot. If I were a real hero, like you English—which means, if I had an ostrich in my inside—I would drink till twelve every night, and eat broiled bones till six every morning. But alas! the ostrich has not been given to me. As a common man I am pretty well, but I have no heroic capacities. We will have a little chasse, and then we will smoke.”
Harry began to be very nervous. How was he to do it? It had become clearer and clearer to him through every ten minutes of the dinner, that the count did not intend to give him any moment for private conversation. He felt that he was cheated and ill-used, and was waxing angry. They were to go and smoke in a public room, and he knew, or thought he knew, what that meant. The count would sit there till he went, and had brought the Colonel Schmoff with him, so that he might
