lustration: Fig. 130.--Grand Ceremonial Banquet at the Court of France
in the Fourteenth Century, archaeological Restoration from Miniatures and
Narratives of the Period.

From the "Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais" of M. Viollet-Leduc.]

From the establishment of the Franks in Gaul down to the fifteenth century
inclusive, there were but two meals a day; people dined at ten o'clock in
the morning, and supped at four in the afternoon. In the sixteenth century
they put back dinner one hour and supper three hours, to which many people
objected. Hence the old proverb:--

"Lever a six, diner a dix,
Souper a six, coucher a dix,
Fait vivre l'homme dix fois dix."

("To rise at six, dine at ten,
Sup at six, to bed at ten,
Makes man live ten times ten.")

[Illustration: Fig. 131.--Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of
Tonnerre.]

Hunting.

Venery and Hawking.--Origin of Aix-la-Chapelle.--Gaston Phoebus and his
Book.--The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.--Sporting Societies and
Brotherhoods.--Sporting Kings: Charlemagne, Louis IX., Louis XI.,
Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I., &c.--Treatise on
Venery.--Sporting Popes.--Origin of Hawking.--Training Birds.--Hawking
Retinues.--Book of King Modus.--Technical Terms used in
Hawking.--Persons who have excelled in this kind of Sport.--Fowling.

By the general term hunting is included the three distinct branches of an
art, or it may be called a science, which dates its origin from the
earliest times, but which was particularly esteemed in the Middle Ages,
and was especially cultivated in the glorious days of chivalry.

_Venery_, which is the earliest, is defined by M. Elzear Blaze as "the
science of snaring, taking, or killing one particular animal from amongst
a herd." _Hawking_ came next. This was not only the art of hunting with
the falcon, but that of training birds of prey to hunt feathered game.
Lastly, _l'oisellerie_ (fowling), which, according to the author of
several well-known works on the subject we are discussing, had originally
no other object than that of protecting the crops and fruits from birds
and other animals whose nature it was to feed on them.

Venery will be first considered. Sportsmen always pride themselves in
placing Xenophon, the general, philosopher, and historian, at the head of
sporting writers, although his treatise on the chase (translated from the
Greek into Latin under the title of "De Venatione"