the reproaches of her own conscience for the
neglect of her duty. At length, faltering and
stumbling in the momentarily increasing
darkness, she reached the Pomponian house,
which was all lighted up from top to bottom.
"Ah!" thought she, "the major domo has, at
least, attended to his business." She hurried
into a small side court-yard where the kitchen
was, and there she found all her army of
assistants: the cook's mates, the scullions, the
marmitous, the plate-scrapers, and the bottle-
washers, all fast asleep, with their ladles, their
knives, and their spits on benches and door-
steps and in corners. "Ah! " cried little
Zita, wringing her hands; "waiting for me,
and quite worn out with fatigue!" Then,
stepping among them without awakening
them, she approached the great folding-doors
of the kitchen, and tried the handle; but the
doors were locked, and through the keyholes
and hinges, the chinks and crannies of the
portal, there came a rich, powerful, subtle
odour, as of the best dinner that ever was
cooked. She thought she understood it all.
Enraged at her absence, her master had sent
for Maravilla, the corpulent female cook of
Septimus Pylorus, his neighbour, to prepare
the dinner, or, perhaps, the great P. Mareinius
Citronius Ostendius had himself
condescended to assume the cook's cap and apron,
and was at that moment engaged within,
with locked doors, in blasting her professional
reputation for ever. She was ruined as a
cook, a servant—a poor little fatherless girl,
with nought but her virtue and her cookery
for a dower. Unhappy little Zita!

She ran back, through the court-yard to
the great banquetting saloon, and there, lo,
she found the table decked, and the soft
couches ranged, the flowers festooned, the
rich tapestries hanging, and the perfumes
burning in golden censers. And there, too,
she found the proud Domina Pomponia, in
gala raiment, who greeted her with a smile
of unwonted benevolence, saying:

"Now, Zita, the guests are quite ready for
the banquet; and I am sure, from the odour
which we can smell even here, that it will be
the very best dinner that ever was cooked."

Then came from an inner chamber the
fruity port-wine voice of Ostendius, crying,

"Ay, ay, I am sure it will be the very best
dinner that ever was cooked; " and the voice
of Pornponius Gotta answered him gaily,
that "Little Zita was not the best cook in
Genoa for nothing," and that he would not
part with her for I don't know how many
thousand sesterces. Poor Zita saw in this
only a cruel jest. For certain another cook
had been engaged in her place, and she
herself would be had up after the banquet,
taunted with its success, confronted with her
rival, and perhaps scourged to death amid
the clatter of drinking-cups. Her eyes
blinded with tears, she descended again to
the court-yard, and fervently, though despairing,
breathed one brief prayer to our Lady
of the Chapel. She had scarcely done so,
when the great folding-doors of the kitchen
flew open, and there issued forth a tremendous
cloud of ambrosial vapour, radiant,
golden, roseate, azure, in which celestial
odours were mingled with the unmistakeable
smell of the very best dinner that ever was
cooked. And lo! hovering in the cloud, the
rapt eye of little Saint Zita seemed to descry
myriads of little airy figures in white caps
and jackets, even like unto cooks, but who
all had wings and, little golden knives at
their girdles. And she heard the same soft
music that had stolen upon her ears in the
chapel; and as the angelic cooks fluttered
out of the kitchen, it seemed as though each
little marmiton saluted the blushing cheek of
the trembling saint with a soft and soothing
kiss.

At the same time the army of earthly
cook's assistants awoke as one scullion, and
without so much as yawning, took their
places at the dresser-board, and composedly
began to dish the dinner. And little Zita,
hurrying from furnace to furnace, and lifting
up the lids of casserole and bain-marie pan,
found, done to a turn, a dinner even such as
she with all her culinary genius would never
have dreamt of.

Of course it was a miracle. Of course it
was the very best dinner ever dressed: what
else could it have been with such cooks?
They talk of it to this day in Genoa; though
I am sorry to say the Genoese cooks have
not profited by the example, and do not
seek to emulate it. They have the best
maccaroni, and dress it worse than any people in
Europe.

The legend ought properly to end with a
relation of how Pompouius Cotta gave his
little cook her freedom, how the guests
loaded her with presents, and how she
married the major domo, and was the happy
mother of many good cooks and notable
housewives. But the grim old monkish
tradition has it, that little Zita died a virgin,
and, alas, a martyr! But she was canonised
at her death; and even as St. Crispin looks
after the interests of cobblers, and St. Barbe
has taken artillerymen under his special
patronage, so the patroness of cooks has ever
been little Saint Zita.

Now ready, price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth
                             boards,

                  THE TWELFTH VOLUME

                                  OF

                    HOUSEHOLD WORDS,

Containing from No. 280 to No. 303 (both inclusive)
and the extra Christmas Number.