DINNERS AND BANQUETS
for invited guests were sumptuous and of long duration. The culinary art of that epoch—as we learn from a work of Bartholomew Scarpi, the Grand Vatel of the sixteenth century and head cook of the saintly Paul V., whose personal meals cost sixty cents a day, but who, in state receptions, entertained magnificently—was something wonderful, according to our modern ideas. For grand dinners, there were four courses. The first consisted of preserved fruits and ornamented pastry, from which, on being opened, little birds flew out, making it literally a vol au vent. Then came the other courses composed of a multitude of the most diverse dishes, poultry with all the feathers on, capons cooked in bottles, meat, game, and fish, alternating with sweet dishes in confused pell-mell, utterly subversive of all our modern gastronomic ideas. Some dishes were prepared with rose-water, and substances the most heterogeneous and contradictory were mingled in the same preparations. The sublimity of the style was to effect the sharpest possible contrast of materials and odors.
The wines most in favor were the heady wines of Greece, the Malvoisy, and the great Neapolitan brands, the Lachrima and the Mangiaguerra, described as black in color, powerful, spirituous, and so thick that it could almost be cut. So, at least, reports the Venetian Bernardo Navagero, writing from Rome in 1558: "E possente e gagliardo, nero e tantospesso che si potria quasi tagliare."
Before the dessert, the cloth was removed, the guests washed their hands, and the table was covered with sweet dishes, highly perfumed, preserved eggs, and syrups.
Both before and after the repast, distinguished guests used what we would now call finger-bowls and mouth-glasses, demonstratively and even noisily. On arising from table, bouquets of flowers were distributed among the guests. From contemporaneous statements as to the cost of various entertainments of that period, we should judge that the Roman provision supply was much cheaper than we to-day find it in those marvels of modern architecture, the Washington and Fulton Markets. Thus, for instance, a wedding-supper, given by a Roman nobleman (Gottofredi), and which was at the time (1588) noted for its beauty as well as its extravagance, cost five hundred crowns, equivalent, allowing for the difference in specie values, to about nine hundred dollars of our money.
THE HORSE-RACES ON THE CORSO,[95]
during the carnival, are, of course, witnessed by our travellers. These races were formerly one of the traditional holiday amusements of the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of a Roman amphitheatre, and they were transferred to the Corso by Paul II. (1468). Seated in the small room of the corner of the Palazetto of St. Mark, whose windows command a view of the entire length of the Corso, this good-natured pontiff, who was fond of promoting the innocent amusement of his subjects, witnessed the running, and had the barberi (little horses) stopped at that point. The poor governors of Rome have ever since borne and still bear the servitude of this tradition. Four hundred years have gone by since Paul II. sat at the window on the Corso, but to this day the Governor of Rome, clothed in the official robes, whose cut and fashion have not varied a line in all that time, must, in the very same room and at the very same window, witness the running and have the horses stopped at the same points. Under Gregory XIII. these races had somewhat degenerated. Buffaloes of the Campagna, as well as horses, were run, and races were even made for children and for Jews. Sixtus V. reformed all this and made new regulations, which, with slight modifications, are to this day in force.