CHAPTER VI.
In the evening, on returning to our charming house, Thè-ki-Han, we found Pan-se-Chen waiting for us. The worthy Mandarin had come to keep us company and dine with us. In order that we might not he too lonely, he had invited two commercial delegates, MM. Bondot and Renard, to meet us. We were served in the European fashion—that is to say, a Chinese servant, the pupil of some horrible English cook, had prepared a series of those insipid hits of fried or roasted meat which people eat in London with potatoes. We gulped down, sadly enough, the culinary inventions due to the anything but gastronomical genius of the Anglo-Saxon race, when, duly displayed upon a handsome silver dish, there appeared a species of game, which is not treated so magnificently in Europe. This was a rat, a real rat, a surmulot. Nothing was wanting, neither head nor tail. We could even see that the defunct was no longer young: the incisors descending from its upper jaw were long, and as yellow as two old fish forgotten at the bottom of a card-box. I do not know
