again referring to his text-book ; "here is the great Madame Pompadour, celebrated for a single dish: Les tendrons d'agneau au soleil et à la Pompadour, sont sortis de l'imagination de cette dame célèbre, pour entrer dans la bouche d'un Roi."" "But it was Love that inspired her-it was Love that kindled the fire in her ima gination. In short, you must acknowledge that 'Love rules the court, the camp, the grove."" "I'll acknowledge no such thing," cried the Doctor, with indignation. "Love rule the camp indeed! A very likely story! Don't I know that all our first Generals carry off the best cooks-that there's no such living any, where as in camp-that their aides-de-camp are quite ruined by itthat in time of war they live at the rate of twenty thousand a year, and when they come home they can't get a dinner they can eat! As for the Court, I don't pretend to know much about it; but I suspect there's more cooks than Cupids to be seen about it. And for the groves, I shall only say I never heard of any of your fêtes champêtre, or pienics, where all the pleasure didn't seem to consist in the eating and drinking." "Ah, Doctor! I perceive you have taken all your ideas on that subject from Werter, who certainly was a sort of a sentimental gourmand, he seems to have enjoyed so much drinking his coffee under the shade of the lime-trees, and going to the kitchen to make his own pease soup; and then he breaks out into such raptures at the idea of the illustrious lovers of Penelope killing and dressing their own meat! Butchers and cooks in one! only conceive them with their great knives and blue aprons, or their spits and white nightcaps! Poor Penelope! no wonder she preferred making webs to marrying one of these creatures! Faugh! I must have an ounce of civet to sweeten my imagination." And she flew off, leaving the Doctor to con over the Manuel des Amphitryons, and sigh at the mention of joys, sweet, yet mournful, to his scul. CHAPTER XIII. "The ample proposition that hope makes SHAKESPEARE. THERE is no saying whether the Doctor's system might not have been resorted to, had not Lady Juliana's wrath been for the present suspended by an invitation to Altamont House. True, nothing could be colder than the terms in which it was couched; but to that her Ladyship was insensible, and would have been equally indifferent, had she known that, such as it was, she owed it more to the obstinacy of her sonin-law, than the affection of her daughter. The Duke of Altamont was one of those who attach great ideas of dignity to always carrying their point; and though he might sometimes be obliged to suspend his plans, he never had been known to relinquish them. Had he settled in his own mind to tie his neckcloth in a particular way, not all the eloquence of Cicero, or the tears of O'Neil, would have induced him to alter it; and Adelaide, the haughty self-willed Adelaide, soon found, that of all yokes, the most insupportable is the yoke of an obstinate fool. In the thousand trifling occurrences of domestic life (for his Grace was interested in all the minutiae of his establishment,) where good sense and good humour on either side would have gracefully yielded to the other, there was a perpetual contest |