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CONNECTED with those enthralling first tales, now 

 that I come to think of it, is the development of certain 

 simple tastes in food which have endured through a life not 

 altogether devoid of gastronomic discrimination. Among 

 these may be mentioned a special delight in lentils ~ later 

 on extended to other members of the pulse tribe, but in its 

 origin especially concerned with lentils. It is to be noted 

 that the Epitome rendering of what in the Authorised 

 Version appears as red pottage is tm plat de lentilles. 

 Now lentils, stewed in some toothsome reddish sauce <not 

 innocent of the savoury onion) was a standing Friday 

 dish in the refectory at Delescluzes (together, be it said, 

 with a Saint Jean fish-pie Saint Jean being the equi- 

 valent of our own mediaeval " Poor John/' otherwise salt 

 cod). The small boy, however, who was destined, at the 

 maturity of time, to become the Master of the House at 

 the Villino Loki, was allowed a fair mutton chop of his 

 own by special compact with M. Delescluze, as a con- 

 cession to his Protestant heresy. 

 The arrangement had been made 

 when the dietary of the jours 

 maigres came, quite accidentally, 

 to the knowledge of his anxious 

 parents. Such a concession might 

 have bidden fair to scandalize the 

 youthful republic at dinner time 

 ~- if not perhaps on purely dog- 

 matic ground, at least upon a question of invidious 

 privilege. But it happened that the intended beneficiary of 

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