two
last dishes were covered with a German sauce, with gilt sugar-plums, and
pomegranate seeds.... At each end, outside the green lawn, was an enormous
pie, surmounted with smaller pies, which formed a crown. The crust of the
large ones was silvered all round and gilt at the top; each contained a
whole roe-deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons, one
young rabbit, and, no doubt to serve as seasoning or stuffing, a minced
loin of veal, two pounds of fat, and twenty-six hard-boiled eggs, covered
with saffron and flavoured with cloves. For the three following courses,
there was a roe-deer, a pig, a sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar, and
covered with powdered ginger; a kid, two goslings, twelve chickens, as
many pigeons, six young rabbits, two herons, a leveret, a fat capon
stuffed, four chickens covered with yolks of eggs and sprinkled with
powder _de Duc_ (spice), a wild boar, some wafers (_darioles_), and stars;
a jelly, part white and part red, representing the crests of the three
above-mentioned persons; cream with _Duc_ powder, covered with fennel
seeds preserved in sugar; a white cream, cheese in slices, and
strawberries; and, lastly, plums stewed in rose-water. Besides these four
courses, there was a fifth, entirely composed of the prepared wines then
in vogue, and of preserves. These consisted of fruits and various sweet
pastries. The pastries represented stags and swans, to the necks of which
were suspended the arms of the Count of Anjou and those of the two young
ladies."

In great houses, dinner was announced by the sound of the hunting-horn;
this is what Froissard calls _corner l'assiette,_ but which was at an
earlier period called _corner l'eau_, because it was the custom to wash
the hands before sitting down to table as well as on leaving the
dining-room.

[Illustration: Fig. 128.--Knife-handles in Sculptured Ivory, Sixteenth
Century (Collection of M. Becker, of Frankfort).]

[Illustration: Fig. 129.--Nut-crackers, in Boxwood, Sixteenth Century
(Collection of M. Achille Jubinal).]

For these ablutions scented water, and especially rose-water, was used,
brought in ewers of precious and delicately wrought metals, by pages or
squires, who handed them to the ladies in silver basins. It was at about
this period, that is, in the times of chivalry, that the custom of placing
the guests by couples was introduced, generally a gentleman and lady, each
couple having but one cup and one plate; h