We find allusions from time to time to the style of living of the class in the country answering to our yeomanry, and of the _bourgeoisie_ in the towns, which appears to have been sufficiently plain. In the romance of “Berte” (p. 78), when Berte finds shelter at the house of the farmer Symon, they give her, for refreshment, a chicken and wine. In the fabliau of the “_Vilain mire_” (Barbazan, vol. iii. p. 3), the farmer, who had saved money, and become tolerably rich, had no such luxuries as salmon or partridge, but his provisions consisted only of bread and wine, and fried eggs, and cheese in abundance-- _N’orent pas saumon ne pertris,_ _Pain et vin orent, et oés fris,_ _Et du fromage à grant plenté._ [Illustration: _No. 122. A Dinner tête-à-tête._] The franklin, in Chaucer, is put forward as an example of great liberality in the articles of provisions:-- _An householdere, and that a gret, was he,_ _Seynt Julian he was in his countré,_ _His breed, his ale, was alway after oon;_ _A bettre envyned man was nowher noon._ _Withoute bake mete was never his hous,_ _Of fleissch and fissch, and that so plentyvous,_ _It snewed in his hous of mete and drynke,_ _Of alle deyntees that men cowde thynke._ _Aftur the sondry sesouns of the yeer,_ _He chaunged hem at mete and at soper._ _Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewe,_ _And many a brem and many a luce in stewe_ (fish pond), _Woo was his cook, but if his sauce were_ _Poynant and scharp, and redy al his gere;_ _His table dormant in his halle alway_ _Stood redy covered al the longe day._ --Chaucer’s Cant. Tales, l. 341.