of another Christmas roast that now and
then was served at the tables of the rich in Provence in mediaeval times.
This was a huge cock, stuffed with chicken-livers and sausage-meat and
garnished with twelve roasted partridges, thirty eggs, and thirty
truffles: the whole making an alimentary allegory in which the cock
represented the year, the partridges the months, the eggs the days, and
the truffles the nights. But this never was a common dish, and not until
the turkey appeared was the goose rescued from her annual martyrdom.

The date of the coming of the turkey to Provence is uncertain. Popular
tradition declares that the crusaders brought him home with them from
the Indies! Certainly, he came a long while ago; probably very soon
after Europe received him from America as a noble and perpetual
Christmas present--and that occurred, I think, about thirty years after
Columbus, with an admirable gastronomic perception, discovered his
primitive home.

Ordinarily the Provencal Christmas turkey is roasted with a stuffing of
chestnuts, or of sausage-meat and black olives: but the high cooks of
Provence also roast him stuffed with truffles--making so superb a dish
that Brillat-Savarin has singled it out for praise. Mise Fougueiroun's
method, still more exquisite, was to make a stuffing of veal and fillet
of pork (one-third of the former and two-thirds of the latter) minced
and brayed in a mortar with a seasoning of salt and pepper and herbs, to
which truffles cut in quarters were added with a lavish hand. For the
basting she used a piece of salt-pork fat stuck on a long fork and set
on fire. From this the flaming juice was dripped judiciously over the
roast, with resulting little puffings of brown skin which permitted the
savour of the salt to penetrate the flesh and so gave to it a delicious
crispness and succulence. As to the flavour of a turkey thus cooked, no
tongue can tell what any tongue blessed to taste of it may know! Of the
minor dishes served at the Christmas dinner it is needless to speak.
There is nothing ceremonial about them; nothing remarkable except their
excellence and their profusion. Save that they are daintier, they are
much the same as Christmas dishes in other lands.

While the preparation of all these things was forward, a veritable
culinary tornado raged in the lower regions of the Chateau. Both Magali
and the buxom Nanoun were summoned to serve under the housekeeper's
banners, and I was told that th