The Physiology of Taste by Brillat Savarin (suggested reading .TXT) 📕

other as distinctive attributes of the last sublunary

revolution.

 

MEDITATION X.

 

AN EPISODE ON THE END OF THE WORLD.

 

I said—last sublunary revolution, and this idea awakened many

strange ideas.

 

Many things demonstrate to us that our globe has undergone many

changes, each of which was, so to say, “an end of the world.” Some

instinct tells us many other changes are to follow.

 

More than once, we have thought these revolutions likely to come,

and the comet of Jerome Lalande has sent many persons to the

confessional.

 

The effect of all this has been that every one is disposed to

surround this catastrophe with vengeance, exterminating angels,

trumps and other accessories.

 

Alas! there is no use to take so much trouble to ruin us. We are

not worth so much display, and if God please, he can change the

surface of the globe without any trouble.

 

Let us for a moment suppose that one of those wandering stars, the

route and mission of which none know, and the appearance of which

is always accompanied by some traditional terror; let us suppose

that it passes near enough to the sun, to be charged with a

superabundance of caloric, and approach near enough to us to

create a heat of sixty degrees Reaumur over the whole earth (as

hot again as the temperature caused by the comet of 1811.)

 

All vegetation would die, all sounds would cease. The earth would

revolve in silence until other circumstances had evolved other

germs: yet the cause of this disaster would have remained lost in

the vast fields of air, and would never have approached us nearer

than some millions of leagues.

 

This event, which in the main, has ever seemed to me a fit subject

for reverie, and I never ceased for a moment to dwell on it.

 

This ascending heat is curious to be looked after, and it is not

uninteresting to follow its effects, expansion, action, and to

ask:

 

How great it was during the first, second, and subsequent days.

 

What effect it had on the earth, and water, and on the formation

and mingling, and detonation of gasses.

 

What influence it had on men, as far as age, sex, strength and

weakness are concerned.

 

What influence it has on obedience to the laws, submission to

authority, and respect to persons and property.

 

What one should do to escape from danger.

 

What influence it has on love, friendship, parental affection,

self-love and devotion.

 

What is its influence on the religious sentiments, faith,

resignation and hope.

 

History can furnish us a few facts on its moral influence, for the

end of the world has more than once been predicted and determined.

 

I am very sorry that I cannot tell my readers how I settled all

this, but I will not rob them of the pleasure of thinking of the

matter themselves. This may somewhat shorten some of their

sleepless hours, and ensure them a few siestas during the day.

 

Great danger dissolves all bonds. When the yellow fever was in

Philadelphia, in 1792, husbands closed the doors on their wives,

children deserted their fathers, and many similar phenomena

occurred.

 

Quod a nobis Deus avertat!

 

MEDITATION XI.

 

ON GOURMANDISE.

 

I HAVE looked through various dictionaries for the word

gourmandise and have found no translation that suited me. It is

described as a sort of confusion of gluttony and voracity. Whence

I have concluded that lexicographers, though very pleasant people

in other respects, are not the sort of men to swallow a partridge

wing gracefully with one hand, with a glass of Laffitte or clos de

Vougeot in the other.

 

They were completely oblivious of social gourmandise, which unites

Athenian elegance, Roman luxury and French delicacy; which

arranges wisely, flavors energetically, and judges profoundly.

This is a precious quality which might be a virtue and which is

certainly the source of many pure enjoyments.

 

DEFINITIONS.

 

Let us understand each other.

 

Gourmandise is a passionate preference, well determined and

satisfied, for objects which flatter our taste.

 

Gourmandise is hostile to all excesses: any man who becomes drunk

or suffers from indigestion is likely to be expunged from the

lists.

 

Gourmandise also comprehends, friandise (passion for light

delicacies) for pastry, comfitures, etc. This is a modification

introduced for the special benefit of women, and men like the

other sex.

 

Look at gourmandise under any aspect you please, and it deserves

praise.

 

Physically, it is a demonstration of the healthy state of the

organs of nutrition.

 

Morally, it is implicit resignation to the orders of God, who made

us eat to live, invites us to do so by appetite, sustains us by

flavor, and rewards us by pleasure.

 

ADVANTAGES OF GOURMANDISE.

 

Considered from the points of view of political economy,

gourmandise is the common bond which unites the people in

reciprocal exchanges of the articles needed for daily consumption.

 

This is the cause of voyages from one pole to the other, for

brandy, spices, sugars, seasonings and provisions of every kind,

even eggs and melons.

 

This it is which gives a proportional price to things, either

mediocres, good or excellent, whether the articles derive them out

of, or from nature.

 

This it is that sustains the emulation of the crowd of fishermen,

huntsmen, gardeners and others, who every day fill the wealthiest

kitchens with the result of their labours.

 

This it is which supports the multitude of cooks, pastry-cooks,

confectioners, etc., who employ workmen of every kind, and who

perpetually put in circulation, an amount of money which the

shrewdest calculator cannot imagine.

 

Let us observe that the trades and occupations dependent on

gourmandise have this great advantage, that on one hand it is

sustained by great misfortunes and on the other by accidents which

happen from day to day.

 

In the state of society we now have reached, it is difficult to

conceive of a people subsisting merely on bread and vegetables.

Such a nation if it existed would certainly be subjected by

carnivorous enemies, as the Hindoos were, to all who ever chose to

attack them. If not it would be converted by the cooks of its

neighbors as the Beotiens were, after the battle of Leuctres.

 

SEQUEL.

 

Gourmandise offers great resources to fiscality, for it increases

customs, imports, etc. All we consume pays tribute in one degree

or another, and there is no source of public revenue to which

gourmands do not contribute.

 

Let us speak for a moment of that crowd of preparers who every

year leave France, to instruct foreign nations in gourmandise. The

majority succeed and obedient to the unfasting instinct of a

Frenchman’s fever, return to their country with the fruits of

their economy. This return is greater than one would think.

 

Were nations grateful, to what rather than to gourmandise should

France erect a monument.

 

POWER OF GOURMANDISE.

 

In 1815, the treaty of the month of November, imposed on France

the necessity of paying the allies in three years, 750,000,000

francs.

 

Added to this was the necessity of meeting the demands of

individuals of various nations, for whom the allied sovereigns had

stipulated, to the amount of more than 300,000,000.

 

To this must be added requisitions of all kinds by the generals of

the enemies who loaded whole wagons, which they sent towards the

frontier, and which the treasury ultimately had to pay for. The

total was more than 1,500,000,000 francs.

 

One might, one almost should have feared, that such large

payments, collected from day to day, would have produced want in

the treasury, a deprecation of all fictitious values, and

consequently all the evils which befall a country that has no

money, while it owes much.

 

“Alas,” said the rich, as they saw the wagon going to the Rue

Vivienne for its load; “all our money is emigrating, next year we

will bow down to a crown: we are utterly ruined; all our

undertakings will fail, and we will not be able to borrow. There

will be nothing but ruin and civil death.”

 

The result contradicted all these fears; the payments, to the

amazement of financiers, were made without trouble, public credit

increased, and all hurried after loans. During the period of this

superpurgation, the course of exchange, an infallible measure of

the circulating of money, was in our favor. This was an

arithmetical proof that more money came into France than left it.

 

What power came to our aid? What divinity operated this miracle?

Gourmandise.

 

When the Britons, Germans, Teutons, Cimmerians, and Scythes, made

an irruption into France, they came with extreme voracity and with

stomachs of uncommon capacity.

 

They were not long contented with the cheer furnished them by a

forced hospitality, but aspired to more delicate enjoyments. The

Queen City, ere long, became one immense refectory. The new comers

ate in shops, cafes, restaurants, and even in the streets.

 

They gorged themselves with meat, fish, game, truffles, pastry and

fruit.

 

They drank with an avidity quite equal to their appetite, and

always called for the most costly wine, expecting in those unknown

enjoyments, pleasures they did not meet with.

 

Superficial observers could not account for this eating, without

hunger, which seemed limitless. All true Frenchmen, however,

rubbed their hands, and said, “they are under the charm; they have

spent this evening more money than they took from the treasury in

the morning.”

 

This epoch was favorable to all those who contributed to the

gratification of the taste. Very made his fortune, Achard laid the

foundation of his, and Madame Sullot, the shop of whom, in the

Palais Royal, was not twenty feet square, sold twelve thousand

petits pates a day.

 

The effect yet lasts, for strangers crowd to Paris from all parts

of Europe, to rest from the fatigues of war. Our public monuments,

it may be, are not so attractive as the pleasures of gourmandise,

everywhere elaborated in Paris, a city essentially gourmand.

 

A LADY GOURMAND.

 

Gourmandise is not unbecoming to women: it suits the delicacy of

their organs and recompenses them for some pleasures they cannot

enjoy, and for some evils to which they are doomed.

 

Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin

well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while

the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly

carved. Her eyes become brilliant, her lips glow, her conversation

is agreeable and all her motions become graceful. With so many

advantages she is irresistible, and even Cato, the censor, would

feel himself moved.

 

ANECDOTE.

 

I will here record what to me is a bitter reflection.

 

I was one day most commodiously fixed at table, by the side of the

pretty Madame M–-d, and was inwardly rejoicing at having

obtained such an advantageous position, when she said “your

health.” I immediately began a complimentary phrase, which

however, I did not finish, for turning to her neighbor on the

right, she said “Trinquons,” they touched each others glasses.

This quick transition seemed a perfidy, and the passage of many

years have not made me forget it.

 

ARE WOMEN GOURMANDS?

 

The penchant of the fair sex for gourmandise is not unlike

instinct; for gourmandise is favorable to beauty.

 

A series of exact and rigorous examinations, has shown that a

succulent and delicate person on careful diet, keeps the

appearance of old age long absent.

 

It makes the eyes more brilliant, and the color more fresh. It

makes the muscles stronger, and as the depression of the muscles

causes wrinkles, those terrible enemies of beauty, it is true that

other things being