We have all heard of the cook who boasted that he could serve up a leathern shoe in twenty-seven different phases of sauce and cookery. I never believed in him, and always set him down as a vapouring fanfaroon--a sort of copper-stewpan captain of cookery. But I have a firm belief that little Zita would have made everything out of anything or nothing culinary; that her stewed pump-handles would have been delicious, her salmi of bath-brick exquisite, her croquettes of Witney blanket unapproachable, her back hair en papillote a dish fit for a king. She cooked such irresistible dishes for the noble Pomponius that he frequently wept, and would have given her her freedom had he not been afraid that she would be off and be married: that the noble Domina Pomponia was jealous of her, and would have led her a sorry life, had she dared to cross her husband; that the guests of the Pomponian house wrote bad sapphics and dactylics in her praise, and would have given her necklaces of pearl and armlets of gold for gifts, but that the Roman finances were in rather an embarrassed condition just then, and that poor trust was dead with the Genoese jewellers. Little Zita was very pretty; she must have been pretty--and she was. She was as symmetrical as one of Pradier’s Bacchantes--as ripe and blooming as the grapes they press; but as pure as the alabaster of which they are made. Her complexion was as delicately, softly tinted as one of Mr. Gibson’s Anglo-Roman statues; her long hair, when she released it from its confining fillet, hung down about her like a king’s mantle; she had wrists and ankles that only gold or gems were worthy to embrace: she had a mouth like a Cupid’s bow, and eyes like almonds dyed in ebony; and teeth that were the gates of ivory of the dreams of love, and nails like mother of pearl. She danced like Arbuscula, and sang like Galeria Coppiola; and she cooked, like an angel--as she is.