Connected with those enthralling first tales, now that I come to think of it, is the development of certain simple tastes in food which have endured through a life not altogether devoid of gastronomic discrimination. Among these may be mentioned a special delight in lentils—later on extended to other members of the pulse tribe, but in its origin especially concerned with lentils. It is to be noted that the Epitome rendering of what in the Authorised Version appears as red pottage is un plat de lentilles. Now lentils, stewed in some toothsome reddish sauce not innocent of the savoury onion was a standing Friday dish in the refectory at Delescluzes together, be it said, with a Saint Jean fish-pie—Saint Jean being the equivalent of our own mediÆval “Poor John,” otherwise salt cod. The small boy, however, who was destined, at the maturity of time, to become the Master of the House at the Villino Loki, was allowed a fair mutton chop of his own by special compact with M. Delescluze, as a concession to his Protestant heresy.

The arrangement had been made when the dietary of the jours maigres came, quite accidentally, to the knowledge of his anxious parents. Such a concession might have bidden fair to scandalize the youthful republic at dinner time—if not perhaps on purely dogmatic ground, at least upon a question of invidious privilege. But it happened that the intended beneficiary of the bi-weekly cÔtelette had been struck by that puzzling tale of Esau’s birthright so readily exchanged for a plat de lentilles.—Red pottage had become invested with an almost mystical quality.

There is often a good deal of auto-suggestion connected with matters of food pleasure. At any rate the Friday plat de lentilles ranked among the most desirable of eatable things, in his young opinion. The answer to the jeer that greeted him from the neighbour on his right, as the appetizing grill was laid by the grinning attendant for the first time upon the wooden board before him, was a prompt offer of half the flesh portion for the whole of his allowance of pulse—and a similar disposal of the remainder on the left-hand side. One chop for two plates of the savoury mess: the barter, as far as the pleasures of the table were concerned, was one of gain, for all parties. It had the further advantage of cutting at the root of conversational unpleasantness. The exchange of a single fat, heretical chop for two helpings of orthodox meagre fare became an established compact—one, it must be said, which demanded not only secrecy but adroitness for its fulfilment.

The redistribution of the courses was usually carried out under the shelter of an enormous broc a relic of conventual furniture, the French representative of our old English Black Jack; an obese, jug-like, wooden contrivance with iron hoops, containing something better than a gallon of the anodyne mixture called abondance—one part thin red wine to four of water. It was a supply which could, without danger to sobriety, be drawn upon, as the regulation had it, À discretion.

The parties to this lentil transaction, which took place at the end of the long table farthest from the eyes of the presiding usher, had to bid for turns.... Where are you this day, you the only two whilom reprobate amateurs of chops on fast days whose names I can yet recall? You, Victor de Mussy, with the notable store of infantile catches and conundrums? And you, Guilleaume Moreau, of more plebeian stamp, who used to look up words for me in the dictionary—a task I truly loathed—at the rate of three words for one bec-de-plume? If you are still in the land of the living, I would take a fair bet that it never occurs to you now to order, of your own accord, a dish of lentils!

Another persistent “nostril memory,” as I have said, is that of the orange. It is a curious one. Of a certainty I must have eaten of the golden apple many a time before that notable night when I was first taken to a theatre. And yet it is invariably that delirious occasion which is recalled, for however fleeting a moment, when the bursting of the essential oil cells of an orange peel sends forth its fragrance.

The drama was “Bas-de-Cuir”—an adaptation of Fenimore Cooper’s Red Indian tale “Leather Stocking.” When I say that the part of “Leather Stocking” was taken by Frederic Lemaitre—personified genius of the old Romantic Melodrama!—that the playhouse was Les Folies Dramatiques—it will be patent to anyone familiar with the annals of the Paris stage that I refer to a very distant period. I could not have been more than eight years old. In those days, apparently, the custom, delectable to the boys if less so to their elders, of consuming oranges between the acts had not yet fallen into desuetude.

It is very odd. There are as we know a large number of recognized methods of eating an orange: from the elaborate and super-epicurean Japanese dissection within the skin, which removes every pellicule and every pip out of the fruit, preparatory to “spooning” the pure pulp, with or without sugar, down to the simple suction known as “Mattie’s way.” Whatever be the process, the effect never fails if I stand by: as sure as the first puff of fresh orange peel meets me, so is my mind instantly brought back to some scene connected with “Leather Stocking”; to some sense of the very first dramatic emotion ever known—the silent laughter of the trapper; the faint, distant war yell of the Huron; the darting of the bark canoe down the rapid; the crack of a gun: the flare of the camp fire—what not? It is, of course, but a transient flash now, but there it always starts, harking, for a second or so, back half a century in the middle of completely unrelated thoughts and in surroundings the least likely to evoke the past—in the silence of a sick bedside, or amid the hot dustiness of a holiday crowd; or even, at dessert time, in the company of some fair neighbour whose young, healthy powers of table enjoyment enable her to conclude a regular dinner with a whole orange eaten in the appreciative and fragrant manner known as À la Maltaise.

Scent alone, and that only for a second at a time, possesses this fantastic power. The taste of marmalade, for instance, is fraught with no special memories. As for the pleasure of sight in connexion with the orange, it is now concentrated upon the half-dozen trees—in pots, but bravely bearing year by year their little burden of fruit destined to grow for purely ornamental and “Italian” effect within doors at the Villino.

What a marvel would an orange be considered, had it not become an object of our everyday life! We take it as a matter of course; but how much poorer would the world suddenly seem if oranges became henceforth unobtainable! And the lemon! If lemons cost a guinea apiece, I once heard a physician say who had a special experience of its wide-reaching healing powers, then would mankind appreciate the treasure it has at hand! One-half of its being, and by no means the less important, the rind, is deplorably neglected. We deal with it as with a practically worthless husk. If we more generally understood the value of its ethereal oil, we might save ourselves many a spell of unaccountable physical depression. I can personally testify to numerous instances of feverish bouts cured solely by a hot decoction of lemon zest.

A similar virtue, by the way, seems to reside in the leaves of the Citrus Limonum. In southern countries—especially, I am told, in Spanish America—these leaves are obtainable in the dry state, and used as a febrifuge and alternative “tea,” or rather tisane, with marked results.