appointed at some distance of time,
that the treater might have leisure to compose certain pickles and
confections which were not to be found among the culinary preparations
of these degenerate days. With a view of rendering the physician's taste
more conspicuous, and extracting from it the more diversion, Peregrine
proposed that some foreigners should partake of the banquet; and the
task being left to his care and discretion, he actually bespoke the
company of a French marquis, an Italian count, and a German baron, whom
he knew to be egregious coxcombs, and therefore more likely to enhance
the joy of the entertainment.

Accordingly, the hour being arrived, he conducted them to the hotel
where the physician lodged, after having regaled their expectations with
an elegant meal in the genuine old Roman taste; and they were received
by Mr. Pallet, who did the honours of the house, while his friend
superintended the cook below. By this communicative painter, the guests
understood that the doctor had met with numerous difficulties in
the execution of his design; that no fewer than five cooks had been
dismissed, because they could not prevail upon their own consciences to
obey his directions in things that were contrary to the present practice
of their art; and that although he had at last engaged a person, by
an extraordinary premium, to comply with his orders, the fellow was so
astonished, mortified, and incensed at the commands he had received,
that his hair stood on end, and he begged on his knees to be released
from the agreement he had made; but finding that his employer insisted
upon the performance of his contract, and threatened to introduce him
to the commissaire if he should flinch from the bargain, he had, in the
discharge of his office, wept, sang, cursed, and capered for two whole
hours without intermission.

While the company listened to this odd information, by which they were
prepossessed with strange notions of the dinner, their ears were invaded
by a voice that exclaimed in French, "For the love of God! dear sir! for
the passion of Jesus Christ! spare me the mortification of the honey
and oil!" Their ears still vibrated with the sound, when the doctor
entering, was by Peregrine made acquainted with the strangers, to whom
he, in the transports of his wrath, could not help complaining of the
want of complaisance he had found in the Parisian vulgar, by which his
plan had been almost entirely ruined and set as