“Everyone agreed that they had never eaten anything more flavorsome. Then, tranquilly, Scaramouche said: ‘What you are eating, Messieurs, is Human! And I think that if you search carefully in the sauce, you won’t fail to find a few small bones revelatory of the kind of meat you’ve been eating with so much satisfaction.’

“The writhing and the laughter redoubled. But Scaramouche, said, imperturbably: ‘If I’m not the Night herself, I’m her cook. The immense blue vault is a transparent frying-pan, on which I fried, holding it by the Milky Way, which is its handle, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Neptune and all the stars, on the stove of the eternal Sun. The comets, which have the form of a cruet, pour flamboyant oil; every red bolide is a grain of Cayenne pepper, and the wind of infinite space has the function of a bellows that activates the fire under the frying-pan—with the consequence that it’s the sky, cooked to perfection, that I’ve served you for supper. Not all the sky; the planets, being tough, remained in the cooker; but the little parasites of the heavenly bodies—I mean the living beings of the firmament—have sizzled in the sauce, and you’ve nourished yourself on your celestial resemblances.’

“At the same time, with a long black leg that raked the whole table, Scaramouche tipped over, broke and extinguished the candelabra; and in the darkness, while he roared with laughter, the dead-drunk scientists, sickened and frightened by the execrable feast, vomited parcels of cutlets, backs, fillets, ribs and fry of Mars, Mercury, Saturn and the divine flesh of Venus, which is golden in the blue of beautiful skies.”

Catulle Mendes, 1888