"My dear Sir John, you may rest assured that your national expansion, as well as your national cookery, will continue in spite of anything we may accomplish here, and I say good luck to them both. When have I ever denied the merits of English cookery?" said the Marchesa. "Many of its dishes are unsurpassed. These islands produce materials so fine, that no art or elaboration can improve them. They are best when they are cooked quite plainly, and this is the reason why simplicity is the key-note of English cookery. A fine joint of mutton roasted to a turn, a plain fried sole with anchovy butter a broiled chop or steak or kidney, fowls or game cooked English fashion, potatoes baked in their skins and eaten with butter and salt, a rasher of Wiltshire bacon and a new-laid egg, where will you beat these? I will go so far as to say no country can produce a bourgeoises dish which can be compared with steak and kidney pudding. But the point I want to press home is that Italian cookery comes to the aid of those who cannot well afford to buy those prime qualities of meat and fish which allow of this perfectly plain treatment. It is, as I have already said, the cookery of a nation short of cash and unblessed with such excellent meat and fish and vegetables as you lucky islanders enjoy. But it is rich in clever devices of flavouring, and in combinations, and I am sure that by its help English people of moderate means may fare better and spend less than they spend now, if only they will take a little trouble."
Menu—Lunch
Gnocchi alla Romana. Semolina with parmesan.
Filetto di Bue al pistacchi. Fillet of beef with pistachios
Bodini marinati. Marinated rissoles.
Menu—Dinner.
Zuppa Crotopo. Croute au pot soup.
Sogliole alla Veneziana. Fillets of sole.
Ateletti alla Sarda. Atelets of ox-palates, &c.
Costolette di Montone alla Nizzarda. Mutton cutlets.
Pollo alla Fiorentina. Fowl with macaroni.
Crema tartara alla Caramella. Caramel cream.
Uova rimescolati al tartufi. Eggs with truffles.
The Sixth Day
The following morning, at breakfast, a servant announced that Sir John Oglethorpe was taking his breakfast in his room, and that there was no need to keep anything in reserve for him. It was stated, however, that Sir John was in no way indisposed, and that he would join the party at lunch.
He seated himself in his usual place, placid and fresh as ever; but, unharmed as he was physically, it was evident to all the company that he was suffering from some mental discomposure. Miss Macdonnell, with a frank curiosity which might have been trying in any one else, asked him point-blank the reason of his absence from the meal for which, in spite of his partiality for French cookery, he had a true Englishman's devotion.
"I feel I owe the company some apology for my apparent churlishness," he said; "but the fact is, that I have received some very harrowing, but at the same time very interesting, news this morning. I think I told you the other day how the vacancy in my kitchen has led up to a very real tragedy, and that the abhorred Fury was already hovering terribly near the head of poor Narcisse. Well, I have just received from a friend in Paris journals containing a full account of the trial of Narcisse and of his fair accomplice. The worst has come to pass, and Narcisse has been doomed to sneeze into the basket like a mere aristocrat or politician during the Terror I was greatly upset by this news, but I was interested, and in a measure consoled, to find an enclosure amongst the other papers, an envelope addressed to me in the handwriting of the condemned man. This voix d'outre tombe, I rejoice to say, confides to me the secret of that incomparable sauce of his, a secret which I feared might be buried with Narcisse in the prison ditch."
The Marchesa sighed as she listened. The recipe of the sauce was safe indeed, but she knew by experience how wide might be the gulf between the actual work of an artist and the product of another hand guided by his counsels, let the hand be ever so dexterous, and the counsels ever so clear. "Will it be too much," she said, "to ask you to give us the details of this painful tragedy?"
"It will not," Sir John replied reflectively. "The last words of many a so-called genius have been enshrined in literature: probably no one will ever know the parting objurgation of Narcisse. I will endeavour, however, to give you some notion as to what occurred, from the budget I have just read. I fear the tragedy was a squalid one. Madame, the victim, was elderly, unattractive in person, exacting in temper, and the owner of considerable wealth—at least, this is what came out at the trial. It was one of those tangles in which a fatal denouement is inevitable; and, if this had not come through Mademoiselle Sidonie, it would have come through somebody else. The lovers plotted to remove madame by first drugging her, then breaking her skull with the wood chopper, and then pitching her downstairs so as to produce the impression that she had met her death in this fashion. But either the arm of Mademoiselle Sidonie—who was told off to do the hammering—was unskilled in such work, or the opiate was too weak, for the victim began to shriek before she gave up the ghost. Detection seemed imminent, so Narcisse, in whom the quality of discretion was evidently predominant, bolted at once and got out of the country. But the facts were absolutely clear. The victim lived long enough to depose that Mademoiselle Sidonie attacked her with the wood chopper, while Narcisse watched the door. The advocate of Narcisse did his work like a man. He shed the regulation measure of tears; he drew graphic pictures of the innocent youth of Narcisse, of his rise to eminence, and of his filial piety as evidenced by the frequent despatch of money and comestibles to his venerable mother, who was still living near Bourges. Once a year, too, this incomparable artist found time to renew his youth by a sojourn in the simple cottage which saw his birth, and by embracing the giver of his life. Was it possible that a man who treated one woman with such devotion and reverence could take the life of another? He adduced various and picturesque reasons to show that such an event must be impossible, but the jury took the opposite view. Some one had to be guillotined, and the intelligent jury decided that Paris could spare Narcisse better than it could spare Mademoiselle Sidonie. I fear the fact that he had deigned to sell his services to a brutal islander may have helped them to come to this conclusion, but there were other and more weighty reasons. Of the supreme excellence of Narcisse as an artist the jury knew nothing, so they let him go hang—or worse—but of Mademoiselle Sidonie they knew a good deal, and their knowledge, I believe, is shared by certain English visitors to Paris. She is one of the attractions of the Fantasies d'Arcadie, and her latest song, Bonjour Coco, is sung and whistled in every capital of Europe; so the jury, thrusting aside as mere pedantry the evidence of facts, set to work to find some verdict which would not eclipse the gaiety of La Ville Lumiere by cutting short the career of Mademoiselle Sidonie. The art of the chef appealed to only a few, and he dies a mute, but by no means inglorious martyr: the art of the chanteuse appeals to the million, the voice of the many carries the day, and Narcisse must die."