Part 42

It may be said that civilization never afforded such examples of deformed appetites as some of those which we find in the records of the olden time. But this is not the case. They are fewer; but they _do_ exist. We read in the modern history of Germany, that a man with an uncontrollable appetite for bacon once presented himself at the tent where Charles Gustavus was supping, before Prague, which he was besieging. The man was a boor, and had sought access to the king, to ask permission to perform before him a feat which he boasted of being able to accomplish,--namely, devour a whole hog. General Koenigsmark, who was present, and was very superstitious, warned the king not to listen to a being who, if not the devil, was probably leagued with him. “I’ll tell you what it is, and please your Majesty,” said the boor, “if you will but make that old gentleman take off his sword and spurs, I’ll eat him before I begin with the hog!” The general was no coward; but he took to his heels, as though the man were serious, and left the king to enjoy what pleasure he might from seeing a peasant eat a whole pig.

In Africa, the rustics eat something smaller than pigs for supper. When Cailli was in that quarter of the world, a Bambere woman gave him some yams, and what he thought was gambo sauce, to make them palatable. On dipping his yams therein, however, he saw some little paws, and at once knew that it was the famous mouse-sauce; but he was hungry, and continued his repast. He often subsequently saw the women chopping up mice for their suppers. When the animals were caught, they were singed over a fire, put by for a week, and then cooked. A hungry man _might_ eat thereof without loathing. We have all partaken of far less clean animals.

It is commonly said that the time of the evening meal is the very hour for wit. I do not know how this may be, but Souwarow’s wit appears to have been uncommonly alert at supper-time. When he returned from his Italian campaign to St. Petersburg, in 1799, the Emperor Paul sent Count Kontaissow to compliment him on his arrival. The count had been originally a Circassian slave, and _valet_ to Paul, who had successively raised him to the ranks of equerry, baron, and count. The Circassian _parvenu_ found the old warrior at supper. “Excuse me,” said Souwarow, pausing in his meal, “I cannot recall the origin of your illustrious family. Doubtless your valour in battle procured for you your dignity as count.” “Well, no,” said the ex-valet, “I have never been in battle.” “Ah! perhaps you have been attached to an embassy?” “No.” “To a ministerial office then?” “That neither.” “What important post, _then_, have you occupied?”--“I have been valet-de-chambre to the emperor,” “Oh, indeed,” said the veteran leader, laying down his spoon, and calling aloud for his own valet, Troschka. “Here, you villain,” said he, as the latter appeared, “I tell you daily to leave off drinking and thieving, and you never listen to me. Now, look at this gentleman here. He was a valet like you; but being neither sot nor thief, he is now grand equerry to his majesty, knight of all the Russian orders, and count of the empire. Go, sirrah, follow his example, and you will have more titles than your master; who requires nothing just now, but to be left alone to finish his supper!”

It was at Paris, however, that the evening hour was generally accounted as the peculiar season of wit; but wit, often too daring at such an hour, sometimes got chastised for its over-boldness.

At one of the _petits soupers_ of Paris, in this olden time, when wit and philosophy had temporarily dethroned religion, a little abbé, who had the air of a full-grown Cupid in a semi-clerical disguise, or who was like Rose Pomaponne in a carnival suit at the Courtille, took upon himself to amuse the assembled company with stories intended to ridicule the old-fashioned faith, (as the philosophers styled Christianity,) and its professors. He was particularly comic on the subject of hell and eternal punishments, upon which questions he dilated with a fulness that would have scarcely edified either Professor Maurice or Dr. Jelf. The whole of the amiable society exploded in inextinguishable laughter at hearing this villanous abbé speak of hell itself as his “feu de joie!” There was, however, one face there that bore upon it no traces of a smile. It was that of an old marechal-de-camp, who might have said, like the old beadle of St. Mary’s, Oxford, “I have held this office, sir, for more than thirty years, and, thank heaven, I am a Christian yet!” Well, the old maréchal frowned as, looking at the infidel abbé, he remarked, “I see very plainly, sir, by your uniform, to what regiment you belong, but it seems to me that you must be a deserter.” “My dear maréchal,” answered the profligate priest, with a beaming smile, “it may indeed be a little as you say, but then, you see, I do not hold in my troop the rank which you enjoy in yours. I am not a marechal-de-camp!” “Parbleu,” rejoined the old soldier, “you never could have reached such a rank, for, to judge by your conduct and sentiment, you would have been hanged long before your chance came for promotion.”

At the _soupers_ of Paris, however, there were few men who were of the character of our marechal-de-camp. Bungener, in his “Voltaire et son Temps,” illustrates the confusion into which men’s ideas had got upon the subject of things spiritual and things temporal, by noticing the affair of the Chevalier de la Barre, in 1766. Amid the accusations brought against him was one, according to which it was laid to his charge that he had recited in public a certain filthy ode. He was condemned to be broken on the wheel, on charges of irreligion, of which this was one. But the part of the question that must have made Astræa weep through the bandage with which poets have bound her eyes, was this, namely, that the author of the obscene ode objected to, Piron, was then in the reception of a pension from the court; and this pension had been procured for him by Montesquieu, by way of compensation for his having lost his seat at the Academy, in consequence of his having been the author of this very ode. This confusion of rewards and penalties was enough to make Justice dash her brains out with her own scales. Piron would have been in no wise troubled by such a catastrophe; the pension from the court enabled him to keep a joyous table, and that was enough for him.

Duclos was a contemporary and a co-disciple with Piron, in the temple of philosophy. In 1766, he was at Rome, where he gave such charming little suppers, that the Sacred College gratefully extended to him the privileged permission of reading improper books! The philosophers were then in possession of considerable influence. Marmontel, who was one of them, was sent to the Bastille, on a certain Friday, in the year 1760. Soon after his arrival, he was supplied with an excellent dinner _maigre_, the which he ate without thinking of complaining. His servant was just on the point of addressing himself to the scanty remains, when lo! an admirable but somewhat irreligious repast, of meat and other things which come under the denomination of _gras_, and are therefore forbidden on fast-days, was brought in. The unorthodox banquet was intended for Marmontel; the more lenten fare was intended for his servant. For in those days, although philosophers were sent to prison, their appetites were left to their heretical freedom.

This liberty was allowed by the state, but it was neither sanctioned nor practised by the Church. The authority of the latter was great previous to the Revolution. There was then a clerical police, which looked into the dishes as well as the consciences of the people--of all degrees. I have somewhere read of a body of this police coming in collision, during Lent, with the officers of the household of the Prince of Conti, who were conveying through the streets, from a neighbouring _rotisseur’s_ to the ducal palace, a supper, through the covers of which there penetrated an odour which savoured strongly of something succulent and sinful, of gravy and gravity. Thereupon the archbishop’s alguazils bade the prince’s men stand and deliver. The followers of the house of Conti drew their swords in defence of their rights and sauces. Much of the latter on the side of Conti, and a little malapert blood on both sides, was spilt, to the edification of the standers by. Finally, the transgressors of the Church law were dragged to prison. The damaged repast remained on the pavé, for the benefit of poor souls who assumed ecclesiastical licence to devour it without fear of damnation; and the servants of Conti were left in damp cells to meditate at their leisure upon the argument which Dean Swift at another period had thus cast into verse:--

“Who can declare, with common sense, That bacon fried gives God offence? Or that a herring hath the charm Almighty vengeance to disarm? Wrapt up in Majesty divine, Doth He regard on what we dine?”

To pass from cooks and church to courtesy and coachmen, I may here speak of a certain Girard who was known in Paris, during the Terror, for his love of what he called liberty and good living. In his early days he was a very independent coachman, and was just on the point of concluding an engagement with an aristocratic old countess, when he remarked--“Before I finally close with madame, I should like to be informed for whom madame’s horses are to make way in the streets.” “For every one,” said the countess. “On questions of precedence, I am not difficult; if it is yielded to me, I take it; if not, I wait.” “In that case,” said the aristocratic John, “I shall not suit, madame, as I myself never draw aside except for the princes of the blood!” Now this great personage in livery was no other than the Girard who became, in 1793, the “public accuser,” and who sent to the scaffold those same nobles who had not been sufficiently noble for him in 1780.

Upon the matter of what became nobility, however, there was always much confusion in the “aristocratic idea” of the highest continental families. Thus who, in contemplating the famous Princess des Ursins, seated among the most honoured at the table of the King of Spain, would dream of her writing the following sentence in one of her letters to Madame de Maintenon? “It is I who have the honour of taking from his majesty his _robe de chambre_, when he gets into bed; and I am there to give it to him again, with his slippers, when he rises in the morning.”

The flattery paid to royalty in France was never more prodigally offered than at the period when “wit and philosophy” were beginning to undermine the throne. We have an instance of this in what happened when the queen of Louis XV. arrived, in 1765, at Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where she intended to sup and sleep. She was met beneath an avenue of trees, outside the town, by the authorities, who offered to her, according to custom, bread and wine. The queen took a portion of the bread, broke it in two, and ate thereof, as well as of some grapes, sipping also the wine; to the delight and edification of the admiring multitude. The authorities were so struck by the act of condescension on the part of the royal personage, that they made record of the fact in the register of the town council. And this they did in such terms as to cause a commentator to remark, that they could hardly have said more, had her majesty been a genuine goddess.

After all, this sort of homage had fallen off, in 1765, from what it had been two centuries before. When Louis XII. encountered his bride, Mary of England, outside Abbeville, he clapped his feeble hands, and wished the devil might seize him (and he _did_ die soon after) if she were not more beautiful than report had painted her! At the gates of Abbeville, the ill-assorted pair were met by the Bishop of Amiens and the municipal magistrates, to welcome them to the evening banquet ere they betook themselves to repose. The bishop presented the new Queen of France with a piece of the Real Cross. “The _mayeurs_ offered a gift, the nature of which brings it within my subject.” The gift was usual whenever king and queen appeared at the portals of the old monkish city. It consisted of three tuns of wine, three fat oxen, and fifteen quarters of oats, three pecks of which were presented to the astonished lady on bended knee, and in a measure painted light blue, and covered with golden fleurs-de-lys. A complimentary address to the king crowned all. “Sire,” said the chief local magistrate, “you may now conclude your marriage in this our good city, without any fear of committing sin thereby; for, in the year 1409 were reformed, as abuses, those synodal statutes by which men in our city were forbidden to live with their wives, during three whole mortal days after the wedding!” The monarch entered and sat down with his consort to a repast which rendered both ill for more than double the period just mentioned. Louis had well-nigh died, like La Matrie, the infidel philosopher at Berlin, of an indigestion. Had he done so, it might have been said of him, as the infidel Prussian king said of La Matrie: “He was a _gourmand_, but he died like a philosopher; let us have no more anxiety about him.”

Frederic himself loved philosophy more than faith, and philosophical though profligate kings, more than he did “Most Christian” or “Most Catholic” monarchs. He was wont, therefore, to laugh at the story of the famished beggar who, standing near the statue of Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf, solicited charity of a friend of Voltaire who was passing by. “In the name of God,” said the mendicant. The student of philosophy was deaf. “In the name of the Holy Virgin!”--“In the name of the saints!” The appeal was unheeded. “In the name of Henri IV!” exclaimed the petitioned; and forthwith the Voltairean put his hand in his pocket, giving a crown-piece, in the name of a philosophical profligate, while he refused a sou when asked for in the name of God. But, as Frederic used to say, “How divine is philosophy!” In his mouth the exclamation was like the well-known cry of Marcel, the ecstatic dancing-master: “Que de choses dans un minuit!”

There is a story told in connexion with this same great Frederic which is a good table trait in its way. Joachim von Ziethen was one of the bravest of the generals who stood by Frederic the Great in victory or defeat. He was the son of a poor gentleman, and had little education save what he could pick up in barracks, camps, and battle fields, in all of which he figured in early youth. If his head was not over-ballasted with learning, his heart was well freighted with that love for God, of which some portion, as the dismissed lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in King’s College tells us, is in almost every individual without exception, and forms the sheet-anchor which shall enable him to ride through the storms which keep him from his desired haven of rest. He became the terror of the foes of Prussia; but among his comrades, he was known only as “good father Ziethen.” He was remarkable for his swiftness at once of resolve and execution, and in remembrance as well as illustration thereof, a sudden surprise is spoken of by an astonished Prussian as “falling on one like Ziethen from an ambush.”

Now, old Ziethen, after the triumph achieved in the Seven Years’ War, was always a welcome guest at the table of Frederic the Second. His place was ever by the side of the royal master whose cause he had more than once saved from ruin; and he only sat lower at table when there happened to be present some foreign royal mediocrity, illustriously obscure. On one occasion, he received a command to dine with the king on Good Friday. Ziethen sent a messenger to his sovereign, stating that it was impossible for him to wait on his majesty, inasmuch as that he made a point of never omitting to take the sacrament on that day, and of always spending the subsequent portion of the day in private meditation.

A week elapsed before the scrupulous old soldier was again invited to the royal dinner-table. At length he appeared in his old place, and merry were the guests, the king himself setting an example of uproarious hilarity. The fun was running fast and furious,--it was at its very loudest, when Frederic, turning to Ziethen, smacked him familiarly on the back, and exclaimed, “Well, grave old Ziethen! how did the supper of Good Friday agree with your sanctimonious stomach? Have you properly digested the veritable body and blood?” At this blasphemy, and amid the thunders of pealing laughter, the saluting artillery of the delighted guests, Ziethen leaped to his feet, and after shaking his grey hairs with indignation, and silencing the revellers with a cry, as though they had been dogs, he turned to the godless master of the realm, and said--words, if not precisely these, certainly and exactly to this effect:--

“I shun no danger;--your majesty knows it. My life has been always ready for sacrifice, when my country and the throne required it. What I was, _that_ I am; and my head I would place on the block at this moment, if the striking of it off could purchase happiness for my king. But there is One who is greater than I, or any one here; and He is a greater sovereign than you who mock Him here from the throne in Berlin. He it is whose precious blood was shed for the salvation of all mankind. On Him, that Holy One, my faith reposes: He is my consoler in life, my hope in presence of death; and I _will not_ suffer His name to be derided and attacked where I am by, and have voice to protest against it. Sir, if your soldiers had not been firm in this faith, they would not have gained victories for you. If you mock this faith, and jeer at those who cling to it, you only lend a hand to bury yourself and the state in ruin.” After a pause he added, looking the while on the mute king:--“What I have spoken is God’s truth; receive it graciously.”

Frederic was the patron of Voltaire, who had dared to say at his own table that what it had taken God and twelve Apostles to build up, one man (Voltaire) would destroy. But Frederic was now, for the moment, more deeply moved by what had been uttered by the unphilosophical Ziethen than by anything that had ever fallen from the brilliant but irreligious Voltaire. He rose, flung his left arm over Ziethen’s shoulder, offered his right hand to the brave old Christian general, and exclaimed:--“Ziethen, you are a happy man! Would that I could be like you! Hold fast by your faith; and I will respect even where I cannot believe. What has occurred shall never happen again.”

A deep and solemn silence followed, and the dinner was spoiled, according to the guests, to whom the king gave the signal to disperse long before their appetites had been satisfied. Ziethen was preparing to withdraw with the rest, but Frederic, taking him by the hand, whispered:--“You, my friend, come with me to my cabinet.”

This anecdote was told by Bishop von Eylert to Frederic William III. That king, who had never heard of the incident, pronounced on it a three-piled eulogium of “excellent, pleasing, and instructive,” adding thereto a natural desire to know what passed between the king and Ziethen in the cabinet. It were doubtless well worth knowing, but I have sought for any notice of it, and all in vain. The good bishop, as he deserved, was invited to remain at Sans Souci, to supper. “I excused myself,” says the prelate, in his memoir of the king, “as having only a common upper coat on.” The king replied, smilingly, “I know very well that you have got a dollar and a dress-coat; you are the same person in either. I want _you_, not your coat; so, go in.”

The Prussian soldiers, in the days of the great Frederic, used to be allowed unlimited liberty in providing themselves with food in an enemy’s country. The like permission, but somewhat enlarged, was given to the Croat soldiers, under the name of foraging for “supper;” but in that permission they included every meal. They are as ready at it as Abyssinians; they cut a slice out of the first beast they fall in with, salt it, put it between the saddle and the horse’s back, gallop till it gets warm, and then eat it with Croat appetite. The sportsmen of Dauphiny eat beccaficoes after much the same fashion; they pluck the bird, sprinkle it with pepper and salt, carry it on their hat to dry in the air, and eat it with relish for supper, without any further cooking. They declare it is far better so than when roasted.