XXII.
THE COOK.
The author of a rare and very curious work,[XXII_1] which no one at present has time to read, formed the charitable project of reconciling medicine and gastronomy. This was a noble enterprize, worthy of a true philanthropist, and which assuredly presented less difficulties than people may think. In effect, what was the moot question? To agree, de forma, without interfering with the substance; to examine whether culinary preparations poison, as has been said, the food which nature gives us, and unceasingly paralyze the salutary action of the dietetic, which the faculty prescribe.
For many centuries cooking has been exposed to these odious reproaches, the gravity of which we do not pretend to attenuate; and yet, ever pursuing its brilliant career amidst revolutions and ruins, the magiric art, endowed with eternal youth, embellishes each new era of civilization, receives its most constant homage, and survives it when it fades away. Let us speak plainly: mankind has thrown on cooks all the faults of which they ought to accuse their own intemperance. It was no doubt easier, than to avoid the fatal abuse of pleasure, and the evils it brings with it; but there was the crying injustice, which we do not hesitate to denounce; there lay the obstacle it was necessary to overcome, in order to bring about a peaceful understanding between the disciples of Galen and the followers of Apicius.
Gourmandise would never have rebelled against the kitchen if all polyphagists had obtained from the good Ceres the gift she granted to Pandarea—a celebrated eater, who could pass days and nights at table, without experiencing the slightest indigestion.[XXII_2]
“But,” say you, “Seneca, the philosopher, perpetually combats, with the authority of his virtuous language, those dangerous men who are busied with a single stomach,[XXII_3] and who lay the foundation for a train of maladies.”
The reply to this is, that Seneca, the pedant, should have thundered against the stomach, which alone is guilty (he has sometimes done so); that this atrabilarious preceptor of Nero, attacked with an incurable consumption, could only eat very little, which much enraged him; and that his imprecations on the subject of the excessive riches and prodigious luxury of the Romans of his age, neither hindered him from possessing, and unceasingly increasing, a more than royal fortune; nor from feeding—well or ill—several thousand slaves; nor from pompously displaying in his palace five hundred tables—only five hundred—of the most elaborate workmanship, of the rarest wood, all alike, and ornamented with precious incrustations.[XXII_4]