The Physiology of Taste (61 page)

But the six francs which had been insisted upon were accepted only sulkily, and as a puny compensation for the trouble caused and the hopes so well deceived.

“Alas, what a miserable fellow I am!” remarked a gastronomer from the royal law court on the Seine. “Since I am always hoping to go back to my own estate, I have left my cook there; business keeps me in Paris, and I have given myself up to the cares of an officious old biddy whose meals really cut me to the heart. My wife is content with anything, and my children are still too ignorant to care: under-boiled beef, burned roast … between the pot and the spit I am starving!”

This plaint went on as he crossed at a sorry pace the Place Dauphine. Fortunately for the public weal, the professor overheard these justified lamentations, and recognized a friend in the lamenter. “You shall not starve to death, my dear chap,” he said in an affectionate voice to the martyred magistrate. “No, you shall not die of a crime for which I can offer you the cure. Be good enough to come, tomorrow, to a classical dinner, in very select company. After dinner there will be a little card party which we shall arrange so that everyone will have a good time, and the evening will, like all such others, hurl itself smoothly into the chasm of the Past.”

The invitation was accepted. The mysterious alchemy worked,
according to the customs, rites, and ceremonies demanded of it; and since that day (June 23, 1825) the professor is happy to have saved for the good of the royal law court one of its most noble pillars.

The artificial thirst of which we have already spoken (“Meditation 8”), that one which demands strong liquors for its passing satisfaction, becomes with time so intense and such a habit that those who are given up to it can not even get through a night without drinking, and are forced to arise from their beds to slake themselves.

This thirst becomes, then, a true illness, and when a man has gone that far it can be prophesied with certitude that he has not two more years to live.

I once traveled in Holland with a rich merchant from Danzig who had owned, for fifty years, the foremost retail house for brandies.

“Sir,” this patriarch said to me, “there can be no question in France of the importance of the business we have carried on, from father to son, for more than a century. I have watched with close attention the men who work for me, and when they abandon themselves completely to their penchant for strong drink, all too common among the Germans, most of them meet their end in much the same manner.

“First they take only a little shot of brandy in the morning, and this quantity is enough for them for several years (what is more, this system is usual among all workmen, and the man who did not down his little glass would be ridiculed by his comrades);
⁴⁷
then they double the dose, which is to say that they take a shot in the morning and again towards noon. They stay at this level about two or three years; then they drink regularly morning, noon, and at night. Soon they begin to take a drink at no matter what time, and will have none of it unless it is flavored with cloves; and by the time they have reached that point they have at the most six months to live: they dry out, fever seizes upon them, they go to the hospital, and they are never seen again.”

I have already mentioned two times these two gastronomical categories which Time itself has done away with.
⁴⁸

Since they disappeared more than thirty years ago, the greatest part of the present generation has never even seen them.

They will probably reappear toward the end of this century; but since such a phenomenon demands the coincidence of a great many future contingencies, I believe that very few men now living will be witnesses to that palingenesis.

It is necessary then that in my role as depicter of morals I give them the benefit of a final touch of my brush; and to bring this about most easily I shall borrow the following passage from an author who can refuse me nothing.
⁴⁹

“Properly, and according to custom, the title of chevalier should only be given to persons who have been decorated with an order, or to younger sons of titled families; but many so-called chevaliers had found it advantageous to bestow this accolade upon themselves,
*
and if by chance they were well-educated and personable, such was the insouciant attitude of the times that nobody bothered to question them.

“Usually they were good-looking fellows; they kept their swords straight and their leg muscles flexed, their heads high, their noses in the air; they were gamblers, rounders, and blusterers, and were essential to any reigning beauty’s entourage.

“They were further distinguished by brilliant courage and an unusual facility for finding themselves sword in hand. At times all that was necessary to plunge them into a duel was to look crossways at them.”

It is thus that Chevalier de S …, one of the best known of those days, met his end.

He had sought out an unsolicited quarrel with a young man newly arrived from Charolles, and they went to settle it behind the Chaussée-d’Antin, at that time almost entirely made up of marshes.

S … saw quickly enough, by the way in which the newcomer
handled his weapon, that he was not dealing with a novice: nonetheless he set out dutifully to test him; but at his first thrust, the youth from Charolles parried with a stroke which was so skilful that the chevalier was dead before he hit the ground. One of his friends, witness to the duel, looked for a long time at the terrible wound and at the route which the sword had followed. Suddenly he exclaimed, as he took his departure, “What a beautiful thrust in
quarte!
What a fine wrist this young man has!” And that was to prove the dead man’s only funeral oration.

At the beginning of the wars of the Revolution, most of these chevaliers enlisted in the battalions, some went into exile, and the rest disappeared. The few who have survived are still recognizable by the set of their heads; but they are thin, and they walk with difficulty: gout has them in its toils.

When there were a great many children in an aristocratic family, one of them was destined for the Church: he began by obtaining the simplest benefices, which took care of the expenses of his education; and from there he became prince, commendatory abbot, or bishop, according to the fervor of his apostolic convictions.

This was, properly speaking, the legitimate type of abbot; but there were other, false ones; and many young men who had some income, and who were none too eager to run the risks of a chevalier’s life, gave themselves the title of
abbe
when they arrived in Paris.

Nothing was easier: with a slight alteration in their garb, they could suddenly appear in churchly masquerade: they were the social equals of everyone; and they were feasted, spoiled, and sought after, for no town house was without its own abbé.

They were short, thickset, chubby men, well-dressed, coaxing and agreeable, inquisitive, gourmands, quick-witted, insinuating; those who are left have run to fat, and have become devout.

There could not be a happier life than that of a rich prior or a commendatory abbot: they had money and respect, no superiors, and nothing at all to do.

The chevaliers will return again if peace lasts long enough, as one must hope it will; but unless there befalls a great change in ecclesiastical administration, the race of abbots is lost forever;
there are no more
sinecures
, and we have gone back to the principles of the early Church:
beneficium propter officium
.

“Your Honor,” an old marquise of the Faubourg Saint-Germain once asked, from her end of the table to the other, “which do you prefer, a wine from Bordeaux or from Burgundy?”

“Madame,” the magistrate who was thus questioned answered in a druidic tone, “that is a trial in which I so thoroughly enjoy weighing the evidence that I always put off my verdict until the next week.”

A host of the Chaussée-d’Antin had an Arlesian sausage of heroic proportions presented at his table. “Please accept a slice of it,” he urged the lady next to him. “Here is a piece of equipment which, I hope, implies a well-furnished establishment.”

“It is truly enormous,” the lady said, peering at it with lewd mischief. “What a pity that it does not resemble anything!”

It is above all people of intelligence who hold gourmandism in high esteem: the rest are incapable of an operation which is made up of a series of appreciations and judgments.

The Countess de Genlis
⁵⁰
boasts, in her Memoirs, of having taught a German lady who had graciously entertained her the way of preparing up to seven delicious dishes.

It was the Count de la Place who discovered a most subtle way to serve strawberries, which consists of moistening them with the juice of a sweet orange (apple of the Hesperides).

Another scholar has improved the recipe still further, by adding the zest of the orange peel, which he obtains by rubbing it with a morsel of sugar; and he pretends to be able to prove, thanks to a scrap which escaped the flames which destroyed the library at Alexandria, that it was fruit thus seasoned which was served at the banquets on Mount Ida.

“I have no great opinion of that fellow,” once said Count de M …, in speaking of a candidate who had just succeeded in winning a certain appointment. “He has never eaten blood sausage à
la Richelieu
, and does not even know cutlets à
la Soubise.”
⁵¹

A heavy drinker was at dinner, and during the dessert he was
offered some grapes. “Thank you very much,” he said, pushing the plate to one side, “but I am not accustomed to taking my wine in capsules.”

Friends were congratulating an amateur gastronomer who had just been appointed assessor of taxes at Périgueux; they dwelt on the happiness he would have, situated in the capital of good living, in the country of truffles and red partridges, of truffled stuffed turkeys, and so on and so on.

“Alas!” said with a sigh the saddened disciple of good living, “how sure can I be that anyone would survive in a country where there are no fresh sea-fish?”

It was almost one o’clock in the morning: it was a fine wintery night, and we had formed in a cavalcade, not without having rendered a vigorous serenade to those town beauties who had the honor to interest us (it was about 1782).

We left Belley, and headed for Saint-Sulpice, a Bernardine abbey situated on one of the highest peaks of the district, at least five thousand feet above sea level.

I was at that time leader of a band of amateur musicians, all good companions and possessing in a strong degree the peculiar virtues which go with youth and health.

“Sir,” the abbot of Saint-Sulpice had said to me one day, drawing me into a secluded window nook, “you would be very kind indeed to come with your friends and sing and play for us on the feast of Saint-Bernard; the saint himself would be even more sanctified, everyone near us would be greatly pleased, and you would have the honor of being the first disciples of Orpheus who had ever penetrated into our lofty regions.”

I could not ask twice for any demand which prophesied such a pleasant adventure: I promised to keep the engagement, and around me the whole room shook.

All our plans were laid carefully in advance, and we left early, since we had four leagues to cover over roads capable of terrifying
even those hardy travelers who have braved the heights of the mighty butte of Montmartre.
⁵³

The abbey was located in a valley closed to the west by the summit of the mountain, and to the east by a less lofty pinnacle.

The western peak was crowned by a pine forest, where once in a single day 37,000 trees were uprooted by a blast of wind.
*
The bottom of the valley was occupied by a great meadow, where rows of beech trees hedged irregular sections, like gigantic models of those little English gardens of which we are so fond.

We arrived about daybreak, and were received by the father cellarer, whose face was quadrangular and whose nose was an obelisk.

“Sirs,” the good man said, “be welcome; our holy abbot will be very happy when he knows that you have arrived; he is still sleeping, for yesterday he was very tired indeed; but you must follow me, and you will see whether or not we waited for you.”

He spoke, and began to walk away, and we followed him, suspecting with good reason that he led us toward the refectory.

There all our senses were overcome by the apparition of the utmost in alluring feasts, a truly classic meal.

In the middle of a spacious table rose a pâté as big as a church; it was flanked on the north by a quarter of cold veal, on the south by an enormous ham, on the east by a monumental pat of butter, and on the west by a bushel of artichokes with pepper sauce.

Moreover, there were various kinds of fruits, and plates and napkins and knives and silverware in big baskets; and at the end of the table were lay-brothers and servants ready to serve us, albeit somewhat astonished to find themselves afoot at this hour of the morning.

In a corner of the refectory there was a pile of more than a hundred bottles, continuously cooled by a natural spring murmuring
Evohe Bacche
as it flowed over and around them; and if the perfume of mocha did not tease our nostrils it is only because in those heroic times coffee was not drunk so early in the morning.

The reverend cellarer delighted in our astonishment for a few minutes, after which he addressed to us the following declamation, which, in our wisdom, we suspected having been prepared in advance:

“Sirs,” he said, “I wish that I might keep you company; but I have not yet read my mass, and today is one of full service. I ought to invite you to partake of this food, but your age, the trip you have made, and the crisp air of our mountains will allow me to dispense with that. Accept then with pleasure what we offer in the heartiest friendship. I must leave you, and go sing my matins.”