I confessed myself beaten. I replied that nature does nothing in vain; that she had evidently formed him for certain duties, and that if he did not fulfil them he contradicted his appearance. That besides, I had no right to expect such confidence, etc., etc. There the correspondence terminated, but a few days after all Paris was amused by the famous encounter between the minister and his cook, in which his excellency did not get the best of the matter. If after such an affair the cook was not dismissed, (and he was not,) I may conclude that the duke was completely overcome by the artist's talents, and that he could not find another one to suit his taste so exactly, otherwise he would have gotten rid of so warlike a servant. As I wrote these lines, during a fine winter evening, Mr. Cartier, once first violinist of the opera, entered my room and sat by the fire. I was full of my subject, and looked attentively at him. I said, "My dear Professor, how comes it that you, who have every feature of gourmandise, are not a gourmand?" "I am," said he, "but I make abstinence a duty." "Is that an act of prudence?" He did not reply, but he uttered a sigh, a la Walter Scott. GOURMANDS BY PROFESSION. If there be gourmands by predestination, there are also gourmands by profession. There are four classes of these: Financiers, men of letters, doctors, and devotees. FINANCIERS. Financiers are the heroes of gourmandise. Hero is here the proper name, for there was some contention, and the men who had titles crowd all others beneath their titles and escutcheons. They would have triumphed, but for the wealth of those they opposed. Cooks contended with genealogists; and though dukes did not fail to laugh at their amphitryon, they came to the dinner, and that was enough. Those persons who make money easily must be gourmands. The inequality of wealth produces inequality of wants. He who can pay every day for a dinner fit for an hundred persons, is often satisfied after having eaten the thigh of a chicken. Art then must use well its resources to revive appetite. Thus Mondar became a gourmand, and others with the same tastes collects around him. PHYSICIANS. Causes of another nature, though far less baneful, act on physicians, who, from the nature of things, are gourmands. To resist the attractions set before them they must necessarily be made of bronze. One day I ventured to say, (Doctor Corvisart was at the end of the table--the time was about 1806):-- "You are," said I, with the air of an inspired puritan, "the last remnant of a composition which once covered all France. The members of it are either annihilated or dispersed. No longer do we see farmers general, abbes, chevaliers, &c. Bear the burden they have bequeathed to you, even if you take the three hundred Spartans who died at Thermopylae; such a fate should be yours." Nobody contradicted me. At dinner I made a remark which was worthy of notice:--