Hereabouts you begin to become sensible of a change in the cookery at the _table-d'hôtes_; and in the gradually increasing predominance of oil and garlic, you recognise the kitchen influences of the sweet south. Garlic is a word of fear--of absolute horror to a great proportion of our countrymen, whose prejudices will permit them to learn no better. I admit that the first whiff of the odorous root coming upon inexperienced nostrils is far from pleasant; indeed, I well remember being once driven from the table in a small _gasthoff_ at Strasbourg by the fumes of a particularly strong sausage. Now, however, I think I should know better. A relish for garlic, in fact, is one of those many acquired tastes which grew upon us with curious rapidity. You turn from the first garlicky dish with dismay; the second does not appear quite so bad; you muster up courage, and taste the third. A strange flavour certainly--nasty, too--but still--not irredeemably bad--there is a lurking merit in the sensation--and you try the experiment again and again--speedily coming to Sir Walter Scott's evident opinions touching the _petit point d'ail_, "which Gascons love and Scotsmen do not despise." Indeed, your friends will probably think it well if you content yourself with the _petit point_, and do not give yourself up to a height of seasoning such as that which I saw in the _salle à manger_ at Agen, drive two English ladies headlong from the room. Every body in the South eats garlic, and you will find it for your interest, if but in self-defence, to do the same; while the oil eating is equally infectious: you enter Provence, able just to stand a sprinkling upon your salad--you depart from it, thinking nothing of devouring a dish of cabbage, chopped up, and swimming in the viscous fluid. The peasants all through the South eat and drink oil like so many Russians. Wandering through the dark and narrow streets of Agen--for we have now reached the point where the eaves of the roofs are made to project so far as to cast a perpetual shade upon the thoroughfare beneath--I came upon a group of tiny urchins, clustered round a grocer's shop, in great admiration of a row of clear oil-flasks displayed in the window. "_Tiens_," said one. "_C'est de l'huile ça--de l'huile claire--ça doit etre bon su' le pain--ça!_" The little gourmand looked upon oil just as an English urchin would upon treacle.