She
went through the evening on a glass of water and two biscuits. Each
new dish on its way round the table was brought first to her; she
waved it away, and it came to me. There was nothing to be done. I had
to open it.
My partciular memory is of a quail-pie. Quails may be all right for
Moses in the desert, but, if they are served in the form of pie at
dinner, they should be distributed at a side-table, not handed round
from guest to guest. The Countess having shuddered at it and resumed
her biscuit, it was left to me to make the opening excavation. The
difficulty was to know where each quail began and ended; the job
really wanted a professional quail-finder, who might have indicated
the point on the surface of the crust at which it would be most
hopeful to dig for quails.
As it was, I had to dig at random, and, being unlucky, I plunged the
knife straight into the middle of a bird. It was impossible, of
course, to withdraw the quail through the slit I had thus made in the
pastry, nor could I get my knife out (with a bird sticking on the end
of it) in order to make a second slit at a suitable angle.
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