ruffle,--white, mark you, and not to be confounded with its
black, hard, knotty, poor cousin of Perigord,--well, the white truffle
is--the white truffle. There are things which admit of no definition. It
would only spoil them. Define the Sun, if you dare. "Look at it," would
be your answer to the indiscreet questioner. And so I say to you,--Taste
it, the white truffle. Not that you will relish it, on a first or second
trial. No. It requires a sort of initiation. Ambrosia, depend upon it,
would prove unpalatable, at first, to organs degraded by coarse mortal
food. It has,--the white truffle, I mean, not the ambrosia, which I have
never tasted,--it has a shadow of a shade of mitigated garlic flavor,
which demands time and a certain training of the gustatory apparatus, to
be fully appreciated. Try again, and it will grow upon you,--again
and again, and you will go crazy after the white truffle. I have seen
persons, who had once turned up their noses at it, declare themselves
capable of any crime to get at it. Nature gave it to Piedmont, "_e poi
ruppe la stampa_." Gold you may find in different places, and under
different latitudes;--the white truffle is an exclusive growth of
Piedmont.

To return. If it is not the want of proper materials, or of taste to use
them, what can be the cause of the unjust ostracism against buttered
toast?

A Genoese friend of mine accounts for it on the same principle on which
another friend of mine, a Polish refugee in London, accounted for the
difference, nay, in many points, the direct opposition, between English
and French habits of life,--that is to say, on the principle of national
antagonism. Why does the English Parliament hold its sittings at night?
my Polish friend would ask. The reason is obvious. _Because_, the French
Parliament sits in broad day, when it sits at all. Why is winter the
season of _villeggiatura_ in England? _Because_ in France it is summer
and autumn. Why are beards and moustaches tabooed in Great Britain?
_Because_ it is common to wear them in France. Why are new pipes
preferred in England for smoking? _Because_ in France the older and more
_culottee_ a pipe, the more welcome it is. And so on, _ad infinitum_.

Arguing on the same principle, my Genoese friend avers that buttered
toast is proscribed at Turin _because_ it is so justly popular in Genoa.
The Genoese, in fact, excel in the preparation of that dainty article.
They have, for the purpose, delicious little r