would be doing a public service who
should cut off the king; and it was feared that he might do this service
himself, by poisoning the king's pastry, now that he would have daily
opportunities of doing so. The king was particularly fond of pastry,
and ate a great deal of it. It would not do now suddenly to give up
eating pastry, so as to set everybody in the palace inquiring why:
besides, it does not seem to have occurred to the king, under any of the
circumstances of his life, to restrain himself in eating. The new
pastry-cook had nothing whatever to do but to make and roll out the
crusts of pies and tarts; but it was thought so easy a matter to infuse
a subtle poison into any of the dishes that stood about in the kitchen,
that it was resolved that the king and queen should eat nothing that was
brought thence, except roast meat, the last thing which anyone would
think of poisoning. Other dishes were to be apparently half-eaten, and
their contents conveyed away.

Here we see the absurdity of the old court-system, with its laws and
formalities;--the system by which so many hangers-on were enriched, to
the injury of better people than themselves: and by which the king
himself was placed in a sort of bondage. Any shop-keeper in Paris might
turn away his shop-boy for insolence; any tradesman's wife might dismiss
her cook for unwholesome cookery: but here was the sovereign of France
compelled to retain in his service a man whom he believed to have said
that it would be a meritorious act to murder him; and this man's pastry
must be admitted to the royal table every day! The man held the
reversion to the office of king's pastry-cook (the right to it when the
occupant should die), and the right once acquired, the man could not, by
court custom, be got rid of. Thus were court offices not open to merit;
but conferred sometimes by favour, and sometimes for money; and greedily
grasped at for the great profits they yielded. One wonders that the
royal family did not discover that the new state of affairs, if it
imposed some restrictions, might have freed them from many annoyances,
if they could have suited their conduct to their affairs.--We shall now
see what trouble was caused by the king's being unable to turn away a
kitchen servant whom he could not trust.

The bread and wine wanted for the royal table were secretly provided by
a steward of the household. The sugar was purchased by Madame Campan,
and pounded in her apar