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Now, you must admire, gentlemen, the intelligence which presided 
at the confection of this truly royal bill of fare. It is the deed of a 
thorough "gourmet" and also of a friend who aims at your most per- 
fect gastronomic welfare and of a physician who attended to all the 
requirements of hygiene. 
" But," some of you will say, " your bill of fare contains indigestible 
ingredients : I never can taste such and such dish without experiencing 
the most violent indigestion." Let us explain ourselves. 
There are no indigestible aliments, in the etymological sense of 
the word. All eatable substance is digested, more or less completely, if 
you like, and more or less rapidly, but it ends always by going through. 
The word " indigestible " is relative and if any one hears again in a 
rather disagreeable fashion, of what he has eaten, it is because this 
unfortunate individual is ill, or the privileged possessor of some peculiar 
idiosyncrasy which departs from the general rule. 
But as I consider you all as I wish you to be, that is, perfectly 
sound and devoid of all caprices as far as your material organization is 
concerned, I am convinced of having found for the composition of this 
repast, the most agreeable and most nutritive aliments. 
I said " agreeable " because we never do well but what we do with 
pleasure. In fact, let you sit down to table with an anxious and pre- 
occupied mind, the stomach will pout for your paying such a little 
attention to the fulfilment of its functions and will punish you with 
indigestion, for having diverted, for the benefit ot the brain, the con- 
centration of energy which it has a right to claim when it is its turn. 
A meal may be a regular work, but that work must be recreative 
and one cannot exaggerate the importance of dining in good company, 
and, besides, food must be artistically prepared in order to be 
palatable and stimulate the appetite. This accounts for my calling 
forth all the secrecies of culinary art to impart to my bill of fare the 
most irreproachable character. 
At last, you must remark that the dish&s are numerous and varied 
in order to supply the tissues of organism with the whole scale of the 
elements they want, for their intimate rebuilding. In fact, all aliments 
do not possess the same nutritive value and the same digestibility and 
the most nutritious are not always those we digest the most easily. 
