In the description of the supper given by Siba to celebrate the return of Nero to Rome, we find that the slaves, when they took off the sandals of the guests, supplied them with others of a lighter description, which were fastened by crossed ribands. Those who did not come in “dress,” were furnished with variegated woollen vestments to cover their togas. Siba’s banquet began to the sound of a hydraulic organ, which, however, was only in place of our dinner-bell. When the lime-wood tables were duly covered and flowered, the guests took their places to the sound of flutes and harps, and said a sort of grace, by invoking Jupiter; while a modest libation of wine was cast on the floor in honour of the household gods. The first course consisted of some remarkably strange dishes, but the guests reserved their appetite, or provoked it with pickled radishes, fried grasshoppers, and similar cattle. A master of drinking was then chosen, whose duty it was to regulate how often the guests should drink; and the latter invariably selected the most confirmed toper. We leave this office to the master of the house, and in well-regulated families that high official leaves his guests to do according to their good pleasure. The garlands having been duly encircled round the brows of Siba’s friends, the trumpets announced the entrance of the second course. The second course was duly discussed, its extraordinary dishes thoroughly consumed, and the four cups were drained to Nero; being the number of letters in his name; and a good deal of jollity began to abound, which was checked a little by the arrival of a present from the emperor, sent to Siba, and which consisted of a silver skeleton. As the guests feared to interpret the meaning of the gift they fell to deeper drinking, and then to singing, and philosophising; and then resumed their eating; and when the force of nature could no further go, they called in the jugglers, and tumblers, and buffoons, and puppets, and having drawn as much amusement from these as they possibly could, they whipped up their flagging sensations by looking at the feats of Spanish dancing girls, and these were succeeded by ten couple of gladiators, who slew one another in the apartment for the pastime of the supremely indifferent personages who lay half asleep and half drunk, and lazily applauded the murderous play. The company were in the very midst of this innocent amusement when the fire was lit up in Rome by Nero, and which did not spare the mansion of Siba. The struggle to escape was not more furious and selfish than that which took place at Prince Schwartzenberg’s ball in Paris, at which the devouring flames had as little respect for some of the guests as they had at the terrible supper of Caius Siba.
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,