THE FEELERS OF THE BARBED MULLET 



desires. At a formal banquet, the host sought not 

 only to offer a fine selection of succulent and exquisite 

 dishes; he endeavoured, further, to bestow upon his 

 guests every kind of distraction and pleasure. The 

 meals lasted for days. They were interrupted by 

 intervals, speeches, acrobatic displays, plays, songs, 

 dances, sports, and burlesques. All the senses received 

 satisfaction until complete satiation was attained. 



One such interlude was the contemplation of the 

 dying mullet. We can picture to ourselves the scene 

 in those halls, beautifully decorated as at Pompeii, 

 where elegance and wealth each tried to outstrip the 

 other, all gay, all bright, with the sound of a melody 

 played on flutes by girl musicians wearing the lightest 

 of veils, as they are depicted on ceilings that have 

 escaped destruction. We can picture the heads of the 

 guests bent above the vessel in which the mullet were 

 expiring. The fishes twisted and turned, like the 

 bodies of gladiators wounded in the battles of the 

 circus. The purple patches appeared, extended, like 

 bleeding wounds. The fresh odour of the rocky 

 shores which they exhaled pleased the sense of smell, 

 excited appetite. And the guests found the same 

 delicious odour in the sauce which, served round the 

 mullet on their return from the kitchen, had been 

 made of their livers pounded with aromatic herbs. 



Of these elaborate repasts of former times nothing 

 but a relic of the mode of preparation has remained 

 to us. But in the neighbourhood of the Mediterranean, 

 in our own day, epicures, when they can secure newly 

 caught and absolutely fresh mullet, give instructions 

 for them to be cooked without being either scaled or 

 cleaned, and they will consider only one method of 

 cooking the fish — grilling for a short time over a 

 wood fire. When the fish is finally placed in front of 

 them, they remove the scales, which come away without 

 any difficulty, separate the flesh and put it aside, and 

 take out the liver and intestines. These they pound up 

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