A story in the celebrated collection of the Cent. Nouvelles Nouvelles (Nouv. 83), composed soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, gives us some notion of the store of provisions in the house of an ordinary burgher. A worthy and pious _demoiselle_--that is, a woman of the respectable class of _bourgeoisie_, who was, in this case, a widow--invited a monk to dine with her, out of charity. They dined without other company, and were served by a _chambrière_ or maid-servant, and a man-servant or valet. The course of meat, which was first placed on the table, consisted of _porée_, or soup, bacon, pork tripes, and a roasted ox’s tongue. But the demoiselle had miscalculated the voracity of her guest, for, before she had made much progress in her _porée_, he had devoured everything on the table, and left nothing but empty dishes. On seeing this, his hostess ordered her servants to put on the table a piece of good salt beef, and a large piece of choice mutton; but he ate these also, to her no little astonishment, and she was obliged to send for a fine ham, which had been cooked the day before, and which appears to have been all the meat left in the house. The monk devoured this, and left nothing but the bone. The course which would have followed the first service was then laid on the table, consisting of a “very fine fat cheese,” and a dish well furnished with tarts, apples, and cheese, which also quickly followed the meat. It appears from this story that the ordinary dinner of a respectable burgher consisted of a soup, and two or three plain dishes of meat, followed by cheese, pastry, and fruit. An illumination, illustrative of another tale in this collection, in the unique manuscript preserved in the Hunterian Library, at Glasgow, and copied in the annexed cut (No. 123), represents a dinner-table of an ordinary person of this class of society, which is not over largely furnished. We see only bread in the middle, what appears to be intended for a ham at one end, and at the other a dish, perhaps of cakes or tarts. The lower classes lived, of course, much more meanly than the others; but we have fewer allusions to them in the earlier mediæval literature, as they were looked upon as a class hardly worth describing. This class was, no doubt, much more miserable in France than in England. A French moral poem of the fourteenth century, entitled “_Le Chemin de Pauvreté et de Richesse_,” represents the poor labourers as having no other food than bread, garlic, and salt, with water to drink:-- _N’y ot si grant ne si petit_ _Qui ne preist grant appetit_ _En pain sec, en aux, et en sel,_ _Ne il ne mengoit riens en el,_ _Mouton, buef, oye, ne poucin;_ _Et puis prenoient le bacin,_ _A deux mains, plain d’eaue, et buvoient._ [Illustration: _No. 123. A Frugal Repast._]