It is most unfortunate that La Reynière omitted to bequeath to posterity a certain monastic recipe of marvellous merit used in connection with wild fowl and all manner of game-birds, which is thus described in the brilliant opening essay of the first year of the "Almanach," the author's reference being to the wild duck, which he advises to be cooked _à la broche_, as it thus preserves all its _fumet_ without losing any of its other qualities: "After it has been roasted and carved" [he proceeds to say] "a sort of poignant _salmis_ may be prepared on the table, the recipe for which we have been in possession of for a long time, and which was given to us by the _procureur_ of a Bernardin abbey--the sole riches that the Revolution could not confiscate from him; this formula, however, we must reserve for our most intimate friends. The recipe is not to be found in any nutritive dispensary, and it becomes all the more precious inasmuch as, not being applicable to the duck alone, it may be utilized with all kinds of dark-fleshed feathered game, and especially with partridges and woodcock--which renders it inappreciable." Far less can be said of the Protestant clergy on the score of cookery or with respect to the improvement of the vine and the invention of beverages. Nearly all clerical roads lead through Rome, it would seem, in so far as relates to gastronomy. Moreover, in Protestant countries--at least among the lesser lights of the church--it is rather the rector who is fêted than who does the fêting, and who, even were he inclined to asceticism, would scarcely be allowed to practise it by his parishioners. In one of his essays, "The Country Sunday," Richard Jefferies tells how the chapel pastor is entertained at table in Wiltshire: