little harmless desire to please the difficult
Osteudius, and so prove to him that
Pomponius Gotta had a slave who was the best
cook in Genoa and in Italy. "Why not? I
am one who, believing that all is vanity,
think that the world as it is could not well
get on without some vanity. By which I
mean an honest moderate love of and pleasure
in approbation. I think we could much
easier dispense with money than with this.
When I see a conceited man, I think him to
be a fool; but when I meet a man who tells
me he does not rejoice when he is praised for
the good book he has written, or the good
picture he has painted, or the good deed he
has done, I know him to be a humbug, and
a mighty dangerous one to his fellow-creatures.

Flowers, wax torches, perfumes, rich tapestries,
cunning musicians—all were ordered
for the feast to the guest who was come
from Asia. The piseator brought fish in
abundance; the lignarius brought wood and
charcoal to light the cooking furnaces withal;
the venator brought game and venison; the
sartor stitched unceasingly at vestments of
purple and fine linen; the slaves who fed
ordinarily upon salsamentum or salt meat
revelled in blithe thoughts of the rich
fragments that would fall to their share on the
morrow of the banquet. It need scarcely be
said that Zita the cook had a whole army of
cook's mates, scullions, marmitons, plate-
scrapers, and bottle-washers under her
command. These peeled the vegetables, these
jointed the meat, these strained the soups and
jellies; but to none did she ever confide the
real cooking of the dinner. Her spoon was
in every casserole, her spatula in every sauce-
boat; she knew the exact number of
mushrooms to every gratin, and of truffles to every
turkey. Believe me in the works of great
artists there is little vicarious handiwork.
Asses say that Mr. Stanfield painted the
scenery of Acis and Galatea by means of a
speaking-trumpet from the shilling gallery,
his assistants working on the stage. Asses
say that Careme used to compose his dinners
reclining on a crimson velvet couch, while his
nephew mixed the magic ingredients in silver
stewpans. Asses say that all the hammering
and chiselling of Praxiteles' statues were done
by workmen, and that the sculptor only
polished up the noses aud finger tips with a
little marble dust. Don't believe such tales.
In all great works the master hand is every
where.

On the morning of the banquet, early,
Zita went to market, and sent home stores
of provisions, which her assistants knew well
how to advance through their preparatory
stages. Then, knowing that she had plenty
of time before her, the pious little cook—
though she had already attended matins—
went to church to have a good pray. In the
simplicity of her heart, she thought she
would render up special thanks for all the
good dinners she had cooked, and pray as
specially that this evening's repast should be
the very best and most succulent she might
ever prepare. You see she was but a poor,
ignorant, little slave-girl, and she lived in the
dark ages.

Zita went to church, heard high mass,
confessed, and then, going into a little dark
chapel by herself, fell down on her knees
before the mother of all virgins, the Queen of
Heaven. She prayed, and prayed, and
prayed so long, so earnestly, so devoutly, that
she quite forgot how swiftly the hours fleet
by, how impossible it is to overtake them.
She prayed and prayed till she lost all
consciousness and memory of earthly things, of
earthly ties and duties, till the vaulted roof
seemed to open, till she seemed to see, through
a golden network, a sky of lapis-lazuli all
peopled with angelic beings in robes of
dazzling white; till she heard soft sounds of
music such as could only proceed from harps
played by celestial hands; till the statue of
the Queen of Heaven seemed to smile upon
her and bless her; till she was no longer a
cook and a slave, but an ecstatic in communion
with the saints.

She prayed till the mortal sky without,
from the glare of noonday took soberer hues;
till the western horizon began to blush for
Zita's tardiness; till the great blue
Mediterranean sea grew purple, save where the
sunset smote it; till the white palaces of Genoa
were tinged with pink, as if the sky had
rained roses. She prayed till the lazy dogs
which had been basking in the sun rose and
shook themselves and raised their shiftless
eyes as if to wonder where the sun was; till
the barbarian soldiers, who had been lounging
on guard-house benches, staggered inside,
and fell to dicing and drinking; till hired
assassins woke up on their straw pallets, and,
rubbing their villanous eyes, began to think
that it was pretty nearly time to go a
murdering; till cut-purses' fingers began to itch
premonitorily; till maidens watched the
early moon, and longed for it to be sole
sovereign of the heavens, that the trysting-
time might come; till the young spendthrift
rejoiced that another day was to come, and
the old sage sighed that another day was
gone; till sick men quarrelled with their
nurses for closing their casements, and the
birds grew drowsy, and the flowers shut
themselves up in secresy, and the frog began
to speak to his neighbour, and the glow-
worm lighted his lamp.

She prayed till it was dusk, and almost
dark, till the vesper bell began to ring, when
she awoke from out her trance, and not a
dish of the dinner was cooked.

And she hurried home, weeping, ah! so
bitterly. For Zita knew her duty towards her
neighbour as the road towards Heaven. She
knew that there were times for all things, and
that she had prayed too much and too long.
Punishment she did not so much dread as