The Monks of Thelem

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIV. With evening came the banquet and the wine; The conversazione; the duet, Attuned by voices more or lesa divine. THE dinner-hour was half-past seven, a time fixed by Desdemona, as Arbiter Epidarum. She said she did not want to turn night into day, and liked to have an evening. Dinner was served...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIV. With evening came the banquet and the wine; The conversazione; the duet, Attuned by voices more or lesa divine. THE dinner-hour was half-past seven, a time fixed by Desdemona, as Arbiter Epidarum. She said she did not want to turn night into day, and liked to have an evening. Dinner was served in the great hall, which made a noble refectory. Not only Desdemona, but one or two of the Brothers exercised steady surveillance over the menu, of which the great feature was that it presented every day a dinner which was not only excellent, but also composed of few courses. There are, said Desdemona, only two or three countries which have any distinctive dinners. But by judicious selection of plats we may dine after the fashion of any country we please. So that sometimes they dined d la Franfaise, and sometimes d I'JEspagnole, when they had Olla Podrida; or it, I'Arabe, when there was always a pillau; or d I'Inde, when there were half-a- dozen different kinds of curry, from prawn curry, which is the king, prince, and even the emperor of all curries, down to curried vegetables; or d I'Allemande, when they had things of veal with prunes; or d I'Anglaise, when, in addition to other good things, there was always a sirloin of beef; or A la Susse, or A I'ltalienne. As there is no cookery in America, it was impossible, save by the aid of canvas-backs, to dine d I'Amdricaine. A servant stood behind every other guest, and instead of the wine being brought round, every man named what he would take. The table was lit by wax candles only, which shed their soft light upon the flowers and silver. And all round the table stretched the great hall itself, the setting sun still lighting up the glories of the windows, and wrapping in a new splendour the painted glass, t...