An epicure on the sick list is a pitiable sight.
Numberless are the stories told of the
expedients to which invalid epicures have resorted.
The old Scotchman, limited to his glass of claret,
took his dose in one of those glass wells that hold
a quart. M. Delaboche, a Parisian epicure of
eminence of the last century, was less fortunate.
A rich financier, with all the mail
courriers on his side, he had only to wish for a
delicacy, to have it. He ate pâtés de foie gras as if
they were cheesecakes, and truffles like cherries.
But his wife, dreading widowhood, crossed him
in all his tastes, so that he was obliged to shut
himself up before he could eat what he liked
and when he liked. At last he fell ill, and the
first remedy that doctors prescribe to a gourmand
is diet. The doctor's rules would have
been ill observed, indeed, but for the cruel
vigilance of madame, who locked up her husband
and kept the keys: a nurse being her under jailer.
The remedies were unpleasant but efficacious,
and monsieur the financier began to amend. At
last he was permitted to eat, and the doctor,
knowing his patient's weakness, gave strict
directions as to each day, prescribing first of all
the white of a fresh egg, and a single slice of
bread. The financier only wished that the egg
he had to eat had been laid by an ostrich
instead of a vulgar barn-door fowl, but he
resolved to have his revenge on the bread. He
ordered the longest bâton of bread he could
find in Paris; it was a yard and a half long, and
weighed more than a pound. Madame would
have fought over this, but there could be no
doubt that the strict letter of the law had been
maintained. The egg was served up with pomp,
and the cook placed it on the bed of the sick
man, whose eyes brightened with returning
health as he sat up in bed eager for the fray.
But too eagerly sucking the white of the
egg, he unfortunately swallowed the yolk also.
Miserable accident! unhappy precipitation!
the bread was now useless. Madame instantly
claimed it as forfeit, and bore it off on her
shoulder with triumph, the egg-shell she
clutched in her other hand. The financier fell
back on his pillow, ill with sheer despair. He
was not consoled until his first fit of indigestion.
A year or two afterwards he died of an excess of
pâtés de foie gras. It was this same artful
invalid who, when the doctor had described his
next dinner in writing as "une cuisse de
poulet," added in a forged hand, " d'Inde,"
which gave far more solidity to the meal.

One of the most heartless things ever done
was a trick once played on Pope, the epicurean
actor. A wicked friend asked him to dine off a
small turbot and a boiled aitchbone of beef,
apologising for the humble fare with the usual
feigned humility of friends.

"Why, it's the very thing I like," said Pope,
in his reply, referring to the aitchbone. "I will
come, my son, with all the pleasure in life."

He came, he saw, he ate; ate till he grew
nearer the table, and could eat no more. He
had just laid down his knife and fork, like a
soldier tired of war's alarms, when a bell was
rung, and in came a smoking haunch of venison.
Pope saw the trick at once; he cast a look of
bitter reproach upon his friend, trifled with a
large slice, then again dropped his now utterly
useless weapons, and burst into hysterical and
unrestrainable tears.

"A friend of twenty years' standing," he
sobbed, "and to be deceived in this manner!"

One of the greatest vexations to a true epicure
is to see the obtuse blunderings of an ignoramus
who does not know what he is eating.

There is a good Yorkshire story admirably
told by Mr. Hayward relating to this form of
epicurean annoyance. At a grand dinner at
Bishopsthorpe (in Archbishop Markham's time)
a dish of ruffs and reeves, that had been
carefully fattened on boiled wheat, was accidentally
placed in front of a silent shy young divine who
had come up from some obscure nook of one
of the Ridings to be examined for priests'
orders, and had been asked to dine by his
grace. Blushing, terribly self-conscious, and
glad to occupy himself by eating any humble
thing that could be got at without asking or
drawing attention to his awkward and
confused ways, he quietly cleared off three parts
of the dish, being quite as hungry as he was
nervous, till suddenly a fat rural dean, seeing
the extent of the disaster, "called the attention
of the company by a loud exclamation of
alarm." It was too late—the last ruff had just
joined the last reeve, and the young divine's
hopes of speedy preferment had vanished with
both. There is a rather similar story also told
of a Scotch officer dining with the late Lord
George Lennox, then commandant at Portsmouth.
Lady Louisa Lennox, with charming
artfulness, tried to lure off the gallant Scotchman
to a more showy but inferior dish.

"Na, na, my leddy," was the stolid reply;
"the wee birdies will do vara weel for me."

In the northern version of the story, the
scene is laid at Rose Castle (where we believe
it really did happen), and the unobservant
divine is said to have replied, in the broadest
Cumberland:

"No, thank you, my lordship, I'll stick to
the lill (little) birds."

With or without conscience, it is astonishing
how much some men will spend on a dinner.
The ordinary prearranged dinner at the Rocher
de Cancale, even when consisting of only ten
covers, cost in 1847 about forty francs a head
exclusive of wine. At Tailleur's the charge
was usually three or four louis a head. It was
at one of these dinners that the celebrated
Cambacérès laid down his knife and fork, and
exclaimed, with grateful enthusiasm:

"M. Tailleur, one could not dine better even
at my house!"

A dinner was given to Lord Chesterfield, on
his quitting the office of Master of the
Buckhounds, at the Clarendon. Thirty persons sat
down. It was ordered by Count d'Orsay, an
epicure of the highest taste, and the price was
six guineas a head. A dinner got up at the
Albion, under the auspices of Sir William