One day, mounted on my good horse La Joie, I was crossing the
pleasant hillsides of Jura.
It was in the worst days of the Revolution, and I was on my way
to Dôle to see Representative Prôt and to obtain from him, if possible, a
safe-conduct to keep me from going first to prison, and then in all probability
to the scaffold.
About eleven o’clock in the morning I arrived at an inn in the
small town of Mont-sous-Vaudrey; and after attending to the wants of my mount I
went into the kitchen, where a sight met my eyes which no traveller could have
beheld without a thrill of pleasure.
In front of a blazing fire a spit was slowly turning, most
admirably decked with kingly quails, and with those little green-footed
landrails which are so very plump. The choice game was yielding its last
drops on to a huge round of toast, which looked as if it had been fashioned by
a sportsman’s hand; and close beside it, already cooked, lay one of those round
leverets which Parisians never see, and the smell of which would scent a church
as sweetly as any incense.
‘Good!’ I said to myself, greatly cheered by what I saw,
‘Providence has not utterly forsaken me. Let me pluck this flower on my
way. I can always die a little later.’
Text: Jean-Anthelme
Brillat-Savarin, The Philosopher in the Kitchen, tr. Anne Drayton, New
York, Penguin, 1970.
Images by André Masson: Top -- Les
Filles de Cuisine (1962); Bottom: Poursuite (1942).
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