I should explain that the Volcano Bar diet has always been an object of intense and luxurious adoration for me. Since the latter stages of infancy I have yearned for this particular sweet above all others. It is smallish, just one and three-quarters of an ounce, a hump in the rounded spreading form of an aging monadnock. The appearance is not inspiring and has, even by devotees, been described as reminiscent of varying forms and states of excrement. There is a lack of glint in the chocolate surface that, to the aficionado of chocolates, denotes an absence of paraffin and a corresponding increase of the crucial cocoa itself. The color of the chocolate is mellow, warm, and smooth. I have always imagined that by the syncretic quirk of some elderly Swiss gentleman (pink-cheeked he would be, and in the habit of walking everywhere clothed in long white tweeds), a fine standard of quality was pursued at the expense of profit: yellow cream must have been stirred into the milk chocolate rather than dried skim crystals, and perhaps the slightly granular filling suspended between the rich and mellifluous chocolate is a miracle of confection.