Then comes philosophy to preside at their feasts with salutary effect. It teaches men that dining is a spiritual function. The table becomes idealised. Much thought is devoted to its decorations, to regaling the eyes with the sight of beautiful birds in their charming many-hued plumage—peacocks, storks, or small and pretty birds strung on skewers. The mistress of the house shows her art in having the daintiest courses served on gold and crystal—things which while tickling the palate content the mind; first dessert, composed of fruits and sweetmeats, then compounds of eggs or fish, light dishes, in which pistachios, pepper, ginger, rosemary, thyme, peppermint—everything that has sweetness or aroma insinuates itself and figures in manifold combinations. Just as in Plato’s _Symposium_, people take their places at table not to eat but to talk, because conversation can have no warmer, more cheerful, more restful setting. Often in the platonist system some incomparable lady presided, and everything centred in her; from her eyes “rained love,” that is, in the words of the guests, “meat and drink, ambrosia and nectar.” She set the pitch; there was a cross-fire of witticisms flashing over the table like fireworks, or else wit fluttered lightly about amid a subdued hum of laughter. With one consent these were voted delightful hours. Men fuddled themselves with talk: “’Tis my greatest vice,” confesses Erasmus. This art became so well acclimatised at the court of Francis I. that it soon became the joy of France. Margaret of France writes enthusiastically about those dinners at which they used to “fill themselves with words more than with meat.” French wit, which always owes a little to good cheer, sparkled quite naturally. In Italy they were at fault in using aesthetic means too freely to support the dinner. They durst not trust simply to conversation, but employed music, a proceeding which appeared rank heresy in France. King Alfonso of Naples, indeed, long regarded as the pastmaster of good living, complicated his dinners with all sorts of refinements; after the first courses, the ears were enchanted with harmonies soft as the breeze of Capri blowing over the sparkling, rippling sea; or else there were mimes, the _pulcinella_,[201] and roars of laughter. Then his guests returned to the table and remained till the moment when, their heads swimming with the strong and generous fumes of Falernian, they removed the plate and withdrew.