In countries strange to the new ideas, men thought only of their palates, _os sublime_, in the ironical phrase of Brandt.[197] In Germany guzzling, at rare intervals but in enormous quantities, was the only joy. So late as the end of the century Montaigne asked a former ambassador in Germany how often he had been obliged to get drunk in the service of his sovereign, and the ambassador reckoned up with all gravity, and declared that he had got off with three occasions, all told. The French traditional practice was the same. Fairs, markets, pilgrimages, weddings, baptisms, funerals, anniversaries, meetings of gilds or corporations all served as pretexts for village gourmandisings characterised by enthusiastic drunkenness, and often enlivened with brawls in which both sexes took part. At the end of one of these feasts we find the wife of the gild president dealing most energetically with a toper who had called her an “old witch.” The châteaux were no less fond of high feeding.[198] Historians ought to consult the kitchen account-books! Without them they will never succeed in arriving at well-founded judgments; we know no human document more convincing, none which enables us with more certainty to reconstruct a bygone mode of life. Unhappily the old kitchen books of France reveal a deplorable spectacle; it is one long procession of herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, innumerable poultry, rabbits and partridges by the dozen, small game in hundreds, and pigs in disgusting profusion. The whole of the delicacies consists, even in the most distinguished houses, of a few cloves or sticks of cinnamon to make hippocras of. As to the wine, it is wine of the current vintage drawn from the cask! Caesar Borgia must have been greatly surprised one Friday, in the winter of 1498, while staying with Madame de la Trémoille, to see filing in a course of two hundred and fifty fish. The next day, again a fast day, the avenues leading to the château were thronged with carts loaded with fish, in honour of the visit of King Louis XII.; in particular there arrived seven hundred and fifty eels. This was in Rabelais’ country. Further, in regard to tutelary geniuses of the table, they were acquainted with none but appalling spectres—Dame Gout,[199] Madam Gravel, or my Lady Apoplexy, to whom they gaily made their salutations.[200]