"The soup is hot," said Gerard.
"But how are we to get it to our mouths?" inquired the senior, despondingly.
"Father, the young man has brought us straws." And Margaret smiled slily.
"Ay, ay!" said the old man; "but my poor bones are stiff, and indeed the fire is too hot for a body to kneel over with these short straws.St.John the Baptist, but the young man is adroit!"For, while he stated his difficulty, Gerard removed it.He untied in a moment the knot on his breast, took his hat off, put a stone into each corner of it, then, wrapping his hand in the tail of his jerkin, whipped the flask off the fire, wedged it in between the stones, and put the hat under the old man's nose with a merry smile.The other tremulously inserted the pipe of rye-straw and sucked.Lo and behold, his wan, drawn face was seen to light up more and more, till it quite glowed; and as soon as he had drawn a long breath:
"Hippocrates and Galen!" he cried, "'tis a soupe au vin - the restorative of restoratives.Blessed be the nation that invented it, and the woman that made it, and the young man who brings it to fainting folk.Have a suck, my girl, while I relate to our young host the history and virtues of this his sovereign compound.This corroborative, young sir, was unknown to the ancients: we find it neither in their treatises of medicine, nor in those popular narratives, which reveal many of their remedies, both in chirurgery and medicine proper.Hector, in the Ilias, if my memory does not play me false---(Margaret."Alas! he's off.")
----was invited by one of the ladies of the poem to drink a draught of wine; but he declined, on the plea that he was just going into battle, and must not take aught to weaken his powers.
Now, if the soupe au vin had been known in Troy, it is clear that in declining vinum merum upon that score, he would have added in the hexameter, 'But a soupe au vin, madam, I will degust, and gratefully.' Not only would this have been but common civility - a virtue no perfect commander is wanting in - but not to have done it would have proved him a shallow and improvident person, unfit to be trusted with the conduct of a war; for men going into a battle need sustenance and all possible support, as is proved by this, that foolish generals, bringing hungry soldiers to blows with full ones, have been defeated, in all ages, by inferior numbers.The Romans lost a great battle in the north of Italy to Hannibal, the Carthaginian, by this neglect alone.Now, this divine elixir gives in one moment force to the limbs and ardour to the spirits; and taken into Hector's body at the nick of time, would, by the aid of Phoebus, Venus, and the blessed saints, have most likely procured the Greeks a defeat.For note how faint and weary and heart-sick I was a minute ago; well, I suck this celestial cordial, and now behold me brave as Achilles and strong as an eagle.""Oh, father, now? an eagle, alack!"
"Girl, I defy thee and all the world.Ready, I say, like a foaming charger, to devour the space between this and Rotterdam, and strong to combat the ills of life, even poverty and old age, which last philosophers have called the summum malum.Negatur; unless the man's life has been ill-spent - which, by the bye, it generally has.Now for the moderns!""Father! dear father!"
"Fear me not, girl; I will be brief, unreasonably and unseasonably brief.The soupe au vin occurs not in modern science; but this is only one proof more, if proof were needed, that for the last few hundred years physicians have been idiots, with their chicken-broth and their decoction of gold, whereby they attribute the highest qualities to that meat which has the least juice of any meat, and to that metal which has less chemical qualities than all the metals; mountebanks! dunces! homicides! Since, then, from these no light is to be gathered, go we to the chroniclers; and first we find that Duguesclin, a French knight, being about to join battle with the English - masters, at that time, of half France, and sturdy strikers by sea and land - drank, not one, but three soupes au vin in honour of the Blessed Trinity.This done, he charged the islanders; and, as might have been foretold, killed a multitude, and drove the rest into the sea.But he was only the first of a long list of holy and hard-hitting ones who have, by this divine restorative, been sustentated, fortified, corroborated, and consoled.""Dear father, prithee add thyself to that venerable company ere the soup cools." And Margaret held the hat imploringly in both hands till he inserted the straw once more.
This spared them the "modern instances," and gave Gerard an opportunity of telling Margaret how proud his mother would be her soup had profited a man of learning.
"Ay! but," said Margaret, "it would like her ill to see her son give all and take none himself.Why brought you but two straws?""Fair mistress, I hoped you would let me put my lips to your straw, there being but two."Margaret smiled and blushed."Never beg that you may command,"said she."The straw is not mine, 'tis yours: you cut it in yonder field.""I cut it, and that made it mine; but after that, your lip touched it, and that made it yours.""Did it Then I will lend it you.There - now it is yours again;your lip has touched it."
"No, it belongs to us both now.Let us divide it.""By all means; you have a knife."
"No, I will not cut it - that would be unlucky.I'll bite it.
There I shall keep my half: you will burn yours, once you get home, I doubt.'
"You know me not.I waste nothing.It is odds but I make a hairpin of it, or something."This answer dashed the novice Gerard, instead of provoking him, to fresh efforts, and he was silent.And now, the bread and soup being disposed of, the old scholar prepared to continue his journey.Then came a little difficulty: Gerard the adroit could not tie his ribbon again as Catherine had tied it.Margaret, after slily eyeing his efforts for some time, offered to help him; for at her age girls love to be coy and tender, saucy and gentle, by turns, and she saw she had put him out of countenance but now.
