The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 77: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

58 REYNOLDS’ WORKS been relating, until all of a sudden they were again con- centrated on the same point, and with a more powerful intensity than ever, on beholding the reappearance of the particular domino. ‘Good heavens!” thought the butler to himself, “‘ is it possible that he is coming for a fourth supper? No, it can- not be. It is a downright physical impossibility. No human creature could have a capacity for such an inordinate amount of food.” The worthy butler was however wrong, for down sat the domino; again an inroad was commenced upon the viands,— another bottle of champagne was done ample justice to. A vague terror stole over the butler; childhood stories of voracious ghouls came back to his memory, he felt ill at ease, and yet he dared not betray what he had experienced. “Tf,” he said to himself, ‘‘ he had now come just to taste the jelly, the whipped cream, the blanc-mange, or some trifle of that sort, one might possibly understand it, but to think that he should now, on his fourth appearance, sit down to devour the best half of that perigorde pie, is some- thing unnatural to a degree. And then too the wine! It is quite clear that when he gets up from his seat, he will reel about in a terrible state of intoxication.” But the supper eater did nothing of the sort. When a repast quite as copious as any of the preceding ones had been disposed of, the domino took his departure with an admirable steadiness of gait; so that it seemed as if four bottles of champagne and at least two of sherry and port, to say nothing of a few glasses of liqueur, had produced not the slightest effect upon the brain of that extraordinary unknown. As for the attendant domestics, they would have been almost as much confounded as the butler himself, were it not that the nature of their duties kept him in a more vital state of calamity. The guests were now crowding more and more to the refreshment-room, and the process of eating and drinking without taking off their masks or throwing back the hoods of their dominoes gave rise to much gaiety and merriment, yet all partially subdued by that well-bred fastidiousness which keeps down laughter to a low key in the saloons of aristocracy or within the walls of royalty’s dwelling. Never- theless, there was quite sufficient animation to wean the CORNICLIOOKS (E(@) im