It was, however, indeed a sight to see my uncle when he had a freemason
to dinner.
On meeting they shook hands in a mysterious manner that was irresistibly
funny; one could see that they were going through a series of secret
mysterious pressures. When I wished to put my uncle in a rage, I had only
to tell him that dogs also have a manner which savours very much of
freemasonry, when they greet one another on meeting.
Then my uncle would take his friend into a corner to tell him something
important, and at dinner they had a peculiar way of looking at each other,
and of drinking to each other, in a manner as if to say: "We belong to it,
don't we?"
And to think that there are millions on the face of the globe who are
amused at such monkey tricks! I would sooner be a Jesuit.
Now in our town there really was an old Jesuit who was my uncle's pet
aversion. Every time he met him, or if he only saw him at a distance, he
used to say: "Dirty skunk!" And then, taking my arm, he would whisper to
me:
"Look here, that fellow will play me a trick some day or other, I feel
sure of it."
My uncle spoke quite truly, and this was how it happened, through my
fault moreover.
It was close on Holy Week, and my uncle made up his mind to give a
dinner on Good Friday, a real dinner with chitterlings and saveloy
sausage. I resisted as much as I could, and said:
"I shall eat meat on that day, but at home, quite by myself. Your
manifesto, as you call it, is an idiotic idea. Why should you manifest?
What does it matter to you if people do not eat any meat?"
But my uncle would not be persuaded. He asked three of his friends to
dine with him at one of the best restaurants in the town, and as he was
going to pay the bill, I had certainly, after all, no scruples about
_manifesting._
At four o'clock we took a conspicuous place in the Café Pénélope, the
most frequented restaurant in the town, and my uncle in a loud voice
described the menu.
We sat down at six o'clock, and at ten o'clock we had not finished. Five
of us had drunk eighteen bottles of fine wines, and four of champagne.
Then my uncle proposed what he was in the habit of calling: "The
archbishop's feat." Each man put six small glasses in front of him, each
of them filled with a different liqueur, and then they had all to be
emptied at one gulp, one after another, while one of the waiters counted
twenty. It was very stupid, but my uncle thought it was very suitable
to the occasion.
At eleven o'clock he was as drunk as a fiddler, so we had to take him
home in a cab and put him to bed, and one could easily foresee that his
anti-clerical demonstration would end in a terrible fit of indigestion.
As I was going back to my lodgings, being rather drunk myself, with a
cheerful Machiavelian drunkenness which quite satisfied all my skeptical
instincts, an idea struck me.
I arranged my necktie, put on a look of great distress, and went and
rang loudly at the old Jesuit's door. As he was deaf he made me wait a
longish while, but at length he appeared at his window in a cotton
nightcap and asked what I wanted.