"The Romans," I said, "had a most swinish taste in wines, and dishes too. The Falernian was boiled syrup, cooked up with drugs, and tempered with salt water. Only think of mixing brine with your tipple; or of placing it in a _fumarium_, to imbibe the flavour of the smoke! The Romans were mere liqueur drinkers. Aniseed, or maraschino, or parfait amour, or any trash of that kind, would have suited them better than genuine, fine-flavoured wine." "_Pourtant_;" said my friend; "you go too far; maraschino and parfait amour are not trash. Although I agree with you, that the palate which eternally appeals for sweets is in a morbid condition. But the Romans, after all, must have had tongues of peculiar nicety for some savours. A Roman epicure could tell, by the relative tenderness, the leg upon which a partridge had been in the habit of sitting at night, and whether a carp had been caught above or below a certain bridge." "Or was it not," I asked, with hazy reminiscences of Juvenal floating about me,--"was it not a certain sewer--the Cloaca Maxima, perhaps?" "Only," argued the priest in continuation, "I could never understand their fondness for lampreys." "Perhaps," said I, "it is because you never tasted them after they had been fattened on slaves." "Perhaps it is," replied the good man, musing. By this time dinner was over, and the guests gone. We had the remains of the dessert, the pick-tooths, and another bottle of the Catalan wine to ourselves. "You French," I ventured, "hardly seem worthy of your fine wines. You never appear to care about them; you seldom sit a moment after dinner to enjoy them; and if you relish anything more than another, it is Champagne, which, after all, is but a baby taste. All your very best wine goes to England; most of your second-class growths to Russia; and your lower sorts to the northern nations on the Baltic. I don't think there is anything like a generally cultivated taste for good wine in France, and yet you are supreme in the _cuisine_." "It was the _fermiers generaux_, and the _financiers_," replied the priest, "who made French cookery what it is. They tried to outshine the old noblesse at table; they revived truffles, and they had the first dishes of green pease, at eight hundred francs a _plat_. Next to the financiers were the chevaliers and the abbés. _Oh, mon Dieu! qu'ils étaient gourmands ces chers amis_; the chevaliers all swagger and dash; the sword right up and down--shoulder-knot flaunting--a bold bearing and a keen eye. The abbés, in velvet and silk--as fat as carps, as sleek as moles, and as soft-footed as cats--little and sly--perfect enjoyers of the gourmandise. Oh, there was nothing more snug than an _abbé commanditaire_! He had consideration, position, money; no one to please, and nothing to do." "These were the good old times," I said.