At the side of the kitchen is a den of a room, into which the _ventero_ keeps stowed away that stock of raw materials which forms the foundation of the national cuisine, and in which garlic plays the first fiddle. The very name, like that of monk, is enough to give offence to most English. The evil consists, however, in the abuse, not in the use: from the quantity eaten in all southern countries, where it is considered to be fragrant, palatable, stomachic, and invigorating, we must assume that it is suited by nature to local tastes and constitutions. Wherever any particular herb grows, there lives the ass who is to eat it. “_Donde crece la escoba, nace el asno que la roya._” Nor is garlic necessarily either a poison or a source of baseness; for Henry IV. was no sooner born, than his lips were rubbed with a clove of it by his grandfather, after the revered old custom of Bearn. [Sidenote: DINNERS IN THE VENTA.] Bread, wine, and raw garlic, says the proverb, make a young man go briskly, _Pan, vino, y ajo crudo, hacen andar al mozo agudo_. The better classes turn up their noses at this odoriferous delicacy of the lower classes, which was forbidden per statute by Alonzo XI. to his knights of _La Banda_; and Don Quixote cautions Sancho Panza to be moderate in this food, as not becoming to a governor: with even such personages however it is a struggle, and one of the greatest sacrifices to the altar of civilization and _les convenances_. To give Spanish garlic its due, it must be said that, when administered by a judicious hand (for, like prussic acid, all depends on the quantity), it is far milder than the English. Spanish garlic and onions degenerate after three years’ planting when transplanted into England. They gain in pungency and smell, just as English foxhounds, when drafted into Spain, lose their strength and scent in the third generation. A clove of garlic is called _un diente_, a tooth. Those who dislike the piquant vegetable must place a sentinel over the cook of the venta while she is putting into her cauldron the ingredients of his supper, or Avicenna will not save him; for if God sends meats, and here they are a godsend, the evil one provides the cooks of the venta, who certainly do bedevil many things. [Sidenote: RECEPTION AT THE VENTA.]