Scop. Nothing, if to be health-giving and of good taste are the same thing as in a mid-day dream.
Crit. I forgive fruits their harmfulness on account of their pleasantness of taste.
Meats
Scop. Do you remember the verse of Cato?
Pauca voluptati debentur; plura saluti.[75]
Give every one a platter of meat with sauce, so that he may swallow it down, and this will warm the intestines and pleasantly wash and so soften the body.
Sim. Here, boy, give me at once some salted pork. Oh! most savoury leg of pork! It is a barrow-hog. If you can hear what I say, return the cabbage and bacon, to the cook, at this season of the year, or preserve it till the winter. Cut me a couple of bits off this sausage, so that the first cup of wine may taste the sweeter.
Crit. Let us follow the advice of physicians that wine be taken with pork. Pour out wine.
Wine
Scop. Now follows action after talk. Surely this is wisest at this time of the year. Look at the necessary preparations for our drinking wine. First of all the keeper of the sideboard (custos abaci) has set out the cups of brightest crystal glass with purest white wine; you would think it water by its mere appearance. It is San Martin wine and partly Rhein wine, but not mixed as they are accustomed to drink it in Belgium, but such as they drink in mid-Germany. The wine-seller to-day has tapped two casks, one of yellow Helvell from the neighbourhood of Paris, and one of blood-red Bordeaux. Others are in readiness kept cool, dark (fuscus) from Aquitaine and black from Saguntum. Let every one choose according to his liking.