Lucius Davoren, Volume I by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The slow days pass, but the guide does not return. Geoffrey's sporting explorations have resulted only in a rare bird, hardly a mouthful for one of the four starving men, though they divide the appetising morsel with rigid justice, Lucius dissecting it with his clasp-knife almost as carefully as if it were a subject.

‘To think that I should live to dine on a section of wood-partridge without any bread-sauce! ' exclaimed Geoffrey dolefully. ‘Do you know, when I put the small beast in my bag I was sorely tempted to eat him, feathers and all! Indeed, I think we make a mistake in plucking our game. The feathers would at least be filling. It is the sense of a vacuum from which one suffers most severely; after all it can't matter much what a man puts inside him, so long as he fills the cavity. Do you remember that experimental Frenchman who suggested that a hungry peasantry should eat grass? The suggestion was hardly popular, and the mob stuffed the poor wretch's mouth with a handful of his favourite pabulum, when they hung him to a convenient lamp-post in '93. But I really think the notion was sensible. If there were a rood of pasture uncovered by the perpetual snow I should imitate Nebuchadnezzar, and go to grass!'