p. iv.

At the back of an office, decorated in the most modern taste, which is to say with furniture in the most ancient style, the corps of a library can be found on whose shelves one perceives, instead of books, every type of food provision, among which one can make out a suckling pig, diverse types of pâtés, enormous saveloys, and other small delicacies accompanied by a good number of bottles of wine, liqueurs, jars of preserved fruits, and brandy, etc.

From the ceiling, in the guise of a lantern, a gargantuan Bayonne ham hangs.

In the forefront of the scene is a table covered with exquisite dishes for more than fifteen people but on which one sees only two place settings.

A buffet, upon which the second service sits, and a serving table placed between the two chairs, announces that this solitary dinner will not be troubled by the presence of any servants.

One reads at the bottom of the Engraving:

The library of a nineteenth-century Gourmand.

 

translation (c) Carolin C. Young, 2013.