After the fish came a vol-au-vent, then a roast fowl, a salad, French beans with a Pithiviers lark-pie. Mme. Rosémilly's maid helped to wait on them, and the fun rose with the number of glasses of wine they drank. When the cork of the first champagne-bottle was drawn with a pop, father Roland, highly excited, imitated the noise with his tongue and then declared: "I like that noise better than a pistol-shot."
Pierre, more and more fractious every moment, retorted with a sneer:
"And yet it is perhaps a greater danger for you."
Roland, who was on the point of drinking, set his full glass down on the table again, and asked:
"Why?"
He had for some time been complaining of his health, of heaviness, giddiness, frequent and unaccountable discomfort. The doctor replied:
"Because the bullet might very possibly miss you, while the glass of wine is dead certain to hit you in the stomach."
"And what then?"
"Then it scorches your inside, upsets your nervous system, makes the circulation sluggish, and leads the way to the apoplectic fit which always threatens a man of your build."
71
