Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton

It proved to be the most delicate and savory repast that had excited their appetites this side of Europe. The friars had their consolations, and even Dona Ignacia Arguello was less gastronomic than Father Landaeta. Rezanov, whose epicurianism had survived a year of dried fish and the coarse luxuries of his managers, suddenly saw all life in the light of the humorist, and told so many amusing versions of his adventures in the wilderness, and even of his misadventure with Japan, that the priests choked over their wine, and Langsdorff, who had not a grain of humor, swelled with pride in his chance relationship to a man who seemed able to manipulate every string in the human network.

"He will succeed," he said to Davidov. "He will succeed. I almost hoped he would not, he is so indifferent -- I might almost say so hostile -- to my own scientific adventures. But when he is in this mood, when those cold eyes brim with laughter and ordinary humanity, I am nothing better than his slave."