[Fig. 130.]--Grand Ceremonial Banquet at the Court of France in the Fourteenth Century, archaeological Restoration from Miniatures and Narratives of the Period.

From the "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Français" of M. Viollet-Leduc.

From the establishment of the Franks in Gaul down to the fifteenth century inclusive, there were but two meals a day; people dined at ten o'clock in the morning, and supped at four in the afternoon. In the sixteenth century they put back dinner one hour and supper three hours, to which many people objected. Hence the old proverb:--

"Lever à six, dîner à dix,
Souper à six, coucher à dix,
Fait vivre l'homme dix fois dix."

("To rise at six, dine at ten,
Sup at six, to bed at ten,
Makes man live ten times ten.")

[Fig. 131.]--Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of Tonnerre.

Hunting.

Venery and Hawking.--Origin of Aix-la-Chapelle.--Gaston Phoebus and his Book.--The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.--Sporting Societies and Brotherhoods.--Sporting Kings: Charlemagne, Louis IX., Louis XI., Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I., &c.--Treatise on Venery.--Sporting Popes.--Origin of Hawking.--Training Birds.--Hawking Retinues.--Book of King Modus.--Technical Terms used in Hawking.--Persons who have excelled in this kind of Sport.--Fowling.

y the general term hunting is included the three distinct branches of an art, or it may be called a science, which dates its origin from the earliest times, but which was particularly esteemed in the Middle Ages, and was especially cultivated in the glorious days of chivalry.

Venery, which is the earliest, is defined by M. Elzéar Blaze as "the science of snaring, taking, or killing one particular animal from amongst a herd." Hawking came next. This was not only the art of hunting with the falcon, but that of training birds of prey to hunt feathered game. Lastly, l'oisellerie (fowling), which, according to the author of several well-known works on the subject we are discussing, had originally no other object than that of protecting the crops and fruits from birds and other animals whose nature it was to feed on them.