The white truffle,--white, mark you, and not to be confounded with its black, hard, knotty, poor cousin of Périgord,--well, the white truffle is--the white truffle. There are things which admit of no definition. It would only spoil them. Define the Sun, if you dare. "Look at it," would be your answer to the indiscreet questioner. And so I say to you,--Taste it, the white truffle. Not that you will relish it, on a first or second trial. No. It requires a sort of initiation. Ambrosia, depend upon it, would prove unpalatable, at first, to organs degraded by coarse mortal food. It has,--the white truffle, I mean, not the ambrosia, which I have never tasted,--it has a shadow of a shade of mitigated garlic flavor, which demands time and a certain training of the gustatory apparatus, to be fully appreciated. Try again, and it will grow upon you,--again and again, and you will go crazy after the white truffle. I have seen persons, who had once turned up their noses at it, declare themselves capable of any crime to get at it. Nature gave it to Piedmont, "_e poi ruppe la stampa_." Gold you may find in different places, and under different latitudes;--the white truffle is an exclusive growth of Piedmont. To return. If it is not the want of proper materials, or of taste to use them, what can be the cause of the unjust ostracism against buttered toast? A Genoese friend of mine accounts for it on the same principle on which another friend of mine, a Polish refugee in London, accounted for the difference, nay, in many points, the direct opposition, between English and French habits of life,--that is to say, on the principle of national antagonism. Why does the English Parliament hold its sittings at night? my Polish friend would ask. The reason is obvious. _Because_, the French Parliament sits in broad day, when it sits at all. Why is winter the season of _villeggiatura_ in England? _Because_ in France it is summer and autumn. Why are beards and moustaches tabooed in Great Britain? _Because_ it is common to wear them in France. Why are new pipes preferred in England for smoking? _Because_ in France the older and more _culottée_ a pipe, the more welcome it is. And so on, _ad infinitum_. Arguing on the same principle, my Genoese friend avers that buttered toast is proscribed at Turin _because_ it is so justly popular in Genoa. The Genoese, in fact, excel in the preparation of that dainty article. They have, for the purpose, delicious little rolls, which they cut in two and suit to all tastes and whims. The upper or under crust, soft or hard, deep brown or light brown, with much or little butter, with cold or hot butter, with butter visible or invisible:--be as capricious in your orders as you like, and never fear tiring the waiter. Proteus himself never took so many shapes.