Darteneuf.—­I should never have endured their imitations.  You might as easily have imposed on a good connoisseur in painting the copy of a fine picture for the original.  Our cooks, on the contrary, give to all other meats, and even to some kinds of fish, a rich flavour of bacon without destroying that which makes the distinction of one from another.  It does not appear to me that essence of hams was ever known to the ancients.  We have a hundred ragouts, the composition of which surpasses all description.  Had yours been as good, you could not have lain indolently lolling upon couches while you were eating.  They would have made you sit up and mind your business.  Then you had a strange custom of hearing things read to you while you were at supper.  This demonstrates that you were not so well entertained as we are with our meat.  When I was at table, I neither heard, nor saw, nor spoke; I only tasted.  But the worst of all is that, in the utmost perfection of your luxury, you had no wine to be named with claret, Burgundy, champagne, old hock, or Tokay.  You boasted much of your Falernum, but I have tasted the Lachrymae Christi and other wines of that coast, not one of which would I have drunk above a glass or two of if you would have given me the Kingdom of Naples.  I have read that you boiled your wines and mixed water with them, which is sufficient evidence that in themselves they were not fit to drink.

Apicius.—­I am afraid you do really excel us in wines; not to mention your beer, your cider, and your perry, of all which I have heard great fame from your countrymen, and their report has been confirmed by the testimony of their neighbours who have travelled into England.  Wonderful things have been also said to me of an English liquor called punch.

Darteneuf.—­Ay, to have died without tasting that is miserable indeed!  There is rum punch and arrack punch!  It is difficult to say which is best, but Jupiter would have given his nectar for either of them, upon my word and honour.

Apicius.—­The thought of them puts me into a fever with thirst.

Darteneuf.—­Those incomparable liquors are brought to us from the East and West Indies, of the first of which you knew little, and of the latter nothing.  This alone is sufficient to determine the dispute.  What a new world of good things for eating and drinking has Columbus opened to us!  Think of that, and despair.

Apicius.—­I cannot indeed but exceedingly lament my ill fate that America was not discovered before I was born.  It tortures me when I hear of chocolate, pineapples, and a number of other fine fruits, or delicious meats, produced there which I have never tasted.

Darteneuf.—­The single advantage of having sugar to sweeten everything with, instead of honey, which you, for want of the other, were obliged to make use of, is inestimable.

Apicius.—­I confess your superiority in that important article.  But what grieves me most is that I never ate a turtle.  They tell me that it is absolutely the best of all foods.