THE ANTHROPOPHAGI. 127 



establish the fact, that such a nation of epicures has pronounced 

 you fat, plump, and tender — ^has thought you would make ex- 

 cellent food — and has decided in privy council that you should 

 not be boiled and seasoned with rice, like an old hen; not 

 cooked en ragoUt, and your flavour heightened with violent, 

 highly seasoned condiments, like insipid, tasteless meat, but 

 be honourably put upon the spit or the gridiron, and be served 

 up au cresson, or simply in your own gi'avy. 



I am every day in fear, my dear friend, of receiving a letter 

 from some companion of your travels, which may say : — 



" MONSIBUE, 



The 12th of August, 1852, the King of the isle 



of having given a grand dinner on the occasion of his 



nuptials with the Princess , of the isle of , I have 



the grief of announcing to you that our unfortunate friend 

 figured in it as the centre dish. If these details can bring 

 any relief to your sorrow, I may say that the savages found 

 him excellent, as we always found him, alas ! before this fatal 

 catastrophe, &c. &c." 



But there are now scarcely any anthropophagi ; men have 

 given over eating one another. They kiU one another, it is 

 true, for a yes or a no, in the form of a duel ; they kill one 

 another without knowing why, as military men, and under 

 the pretext of glory ; they ruin one another, they imprison 

 one another, they deprive one another of bread, air, liberty, 

 &c. From these observations, and a thousand others that 

 could be made, it appears that if they no longer eat each 

 other, it is not from any feeling of charity or neighbourly 

 love, but simply because it is now acknowledged and esta- 

 blished that man is a food, more than mediocre, hard to digest, 

 and of a disagreeable flavour. 



I have no great reason then, my friends, to fear that you 

 should be on the spit at the time 1 am writing these lines; if 

 you were, I should grieve, both on your account and that of 

 these unhappy savages, to think that unless you have acquired 

 a little embonpoint in your peregrinations, they would make 

 but a bad dinner. 



I am at this moment in the midst of a nation of real 



