There is a collection of horrible, though admirably executed etchings,
by the “noble Jacques Callott,” extant, called Les Saincts et Sainctes
de l’Année. It is a complete pictorial calendar of the Romish
martyrology. No amount of indigestion, caused by suppers of underdone
pork-chops; no nightmares, piled one on another; no distempered
imaginings of topers in the worst state of delirium tremens; no
visions of men with guilt-laden consciences; could culminate into
a tenth part of the horrors that the noble Jacques has perpetuated
with his immortal graver. All the refinements of torture, invented by
the ruthless and cruel pagans, and inflicted by them on the early
confessors, are here set down in chiaro oscuro; not a dislocated limb
is omitted, not a lacerated muscle is passed over. The whole work is
a vast dissecting-room--a fasciculus of scarifications, maimings,
and dismemberments--of red-hot pincers, scalding oil, molten lead,
gridirons, wire scourges, jagged knives, crowns of spikes, hatchets,
poisoned daggers, tarred shirts, and wild beasts.
The blessed saints had a bad time of it for certain. How should we, I
wonder, with our pluralities, our Easter-offerings, and regium donum,
our scarlet hats and stockings, and dwellings in the gate of Flam; our
Exeter Hall meetings and buttered muffins afterwards; our first-class
missionary passages to the South Seas, and grants of land and fat hogs
from King Wabashongo; our dean and chapter dinners, and semi-military
chaplains’ uniforms (Oh, last-invented, but not least scorn-worthy of
humbugs!); how should we confront the stake, the shambles, and the
carnifex, the scourge, the rack, and the amphitheatre? Surely the faith
must have been strong, or the legends untrue!
Yet there are more saints than the noble Jacques ever dreamed of in
his grim category, crowded as it is. Saint Patrick, if we may credit
the Irish legend, had two birthdays; still, the number of saints, all
duly canonised, is so great, that the year can scarcely spare them
the sixth of a birth-day apiece. Only yesterday, the postman (he is a
Parisian postman, and, in appearance, is something between a policeman
and a field-marshal in disguise) brought me a deformed little card,
on which was pasted an almanac with a whole calendar-full of saints,
neatly tied up with cherry-coloured ribbon, accompanying the gift with
the compliments of the season, and an ardent wish that the new year
might prove bonne et belle to me; all of which meant that I should
give him two francs, on pain of being denounced to the concierge as a
curmudgeon, to the landlord as a penniless lodger, and to the police as
a suspicious character. Musing over the little almanac, in the futile
attempt to get two francs’ worth of information out of it, I found a
whole army of saints, of whom I had never heard before, and noticed the
absence of a great many who are duly set down in another calendar I
possess. Would you believe that neither Saint Giles nor Saint Swithin
was to be found in my postman’s hagiology--that no mention was made
of Saint Waldeburga, or of the blessed Saint Wuthelstan; while on
the other hand I found Saint Yon, Saint Fiacre, Saint Ovid, Saint
Babylas, Saint Pepin, Saint Ponce, Saint Frisque, Saint Nestor, and
Saint Pantaloon? What do we know of these saints in England? Where were
Saint Willibald, Saint Winifred, Saint Edward the Confessor, and Saint
Dunstan, the nose-tweaker? Nowhere! Yet they must all have their days,
their eves, and feasts. Where, above all, was my little Saint Zita?
If one of the best of Christian gentlemen--the kindly humourist, who
wrote the Ingoldsby Legends--could tell us, without scandal to his
cloth or creed, the wondrous stories of Saint Gengulphus and Saint
Odille, Saint Anthony and Saint Nicholas, shall I be accused of
irreverence, if, in my own way, I tell the legend of little Saint Zita?
I must premise that the first discovery of the saintly tradition is due
to M. Alphonse Karr, who has a villa at Genoa, the birth-place of the
saint herself.
I have no memory for dates, and have no printed information to go upon,
so I am unable to state the exact year, or even century, in which Saint
Zita flourished. But I know that it was in the dark ages, and that the
Christian religion was young, and that it was considerably more than
one thousand five hundred years ago.
Now, Pomponius Cotta (I give him that name because it is a sounding
one--not that I know his real denomination) was a noble Roman. He was
one of the actors in that drama which Mr. Gibbon of London and Lausanne
so elegantly described some centuries afterwards: The Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire. It must have been a strange time, that Decline and
Fall. Reflecting upon the gigantic, overgrown, diseased civilisation
of the wonderful empire, surrounded and preyed upon by savage and
barbarous Goths and Visigoths, Vandals, Dacians, and Pannonians,
I cannot help picturing to myself some superannuated old noble,
accomplished, luxurious, diseased and depraved--learned in bon-mots
and scandalous histories of a former age, uselessly wealthy, corruptly
cultivated, obsoletely magnificent, full of memories of a splendid but
infamous life, too old to reform, too callous to repent, cynically
presaging a deluge after him, yet trembling lest that deluge should
come while he was yet upon the stage, and wash his death-bed with
bitter waters; who is the sport and mock, the unwilling companion and
victim unable to help himself, of a throng of rough, brutal, unpolished
youngsters--hobbedehoys of the new generation--who carouse at his
expense, smoke tobacco under his nose, borrow his money, slap him on
the back, and call him old fogey behind it, sneer at his worn-out
stories, tread on his gouty toes, ridicule his obsolete politeness,
and tie crackers to the back of his coat collar. Have you not seen the
decline and fall of the human empire? So men and empires have alike
their decadence.
But Pomponius Cotta never recked, it is very probable, of such things.
He might have occasionally expressed his belief, like some noble Romans
of our own age and empire, that the country was going to the bad; but
he had large revenues, which he spent in a right noble and Roman
manner; and he laid whatever ugly misgivings he had in a red sea of
Falernian and Chiajian (if, indeed, all the stock of those celebrated
brands had not already been drunk out by the thirsty Visigoths and
Vandals). He had the finest house in Genoa; and you who know what
glorious palaces the city of the Dorias and the Spinolas can yet boast
of, even in these degenerate days, may form an idea of what marvels of
marble, statuary, frescos, and mosaics owned Pomponius Cotta for lord,
in the days when there was yet a Parthenon at Athens and a Capitol at
Rome.
The noble Pomponius was a Christian, but I am afraid in a very
slovenly, lukewarm, semi-pagan sort of way. As there are yet in France
some shrivelled old good-for-nothings whose sympathies are with
Voltaire and d’Alembert--who sigh for the days of the Encyclopedia,
the Esprits-forts, and the Baron d’Holbach’s witty, wicked suppers, so
Pomponius furtively regretted the old bad era before creation heard
the voice that cried out that the good Pan was dead[5]--the days when
there were mysteries and oracles, sacrifices and haruspices, Lares and
Penates, and when laziness and lust, dishonesty and superstition, were
reduced into systems, and dignified with the name of philosophy. So
Pomponius half believed in the five thousand gods he had lost, and was
but a skin-deep worshipper of the One left. As for his wife, the Domina
Flavia Pomponia, she came of far too noble a Roman family, was far too
great a lady, thought far too much of crimping her tresses, perfuming
her dress, painting her face, giving grand entertainments, and worrying
her slaves, to give herself to piety and the practice of religion; and
though Onesimus, that blessed though somewhat unclean hermit, did often
come to the Pomponian house and take its mistress roundly to task for
her mundane mode of life, she only laughed at the good man; quizzed
his hair, shirt, and long thickly-peopled beard; and endeavoured to
seduce him from his hermit fare of roots and herbs and spring-water,
by pressing invitations to partake of dainty meals and draughts of hot
wine.
[Footnote 5: This is one of the earliest traditions of the Christian
era. That at midnight on the first Christmas-Eve a great voice was
heard all over the world, crying “The God Pan is dead.” Milton bursts
into colossal melody on this key-note in his magnificent Christmas
hymn.]
I am not so uncharitable as to assume that all the seven deadly sins
found refuge in the mansion of Pomponius Cotta, but it is certain
that it was a very fortalice and citadel for one of them--namely,
gluttony. There never were such noble Romans (out of Guildhall) as the
Pomponii for guzzling and guttling, banqueting, junketing, feasting,
and carousing. It was well that plate glass was not invented in those
times, for the house was turned out of windows regularly every day, and
the major part of the Pomponian revenues would have been expended in
glaziers’ bills. But there were dinners and suppers and after-suppers.
The guests ate till they couldn’t move, and drank till they couldn’t
see. Of course they crowned themselves with flowers, and lolled upon
soft couches, and had little boys to titillate their noses with rare
perfumes, and pledged each other to the sounds of dulcet music; but
they were an emerited set of gormandisers for all that, and richly
deserved the visitation of the stern Nemesis that sate ever in the gate
in the shape of the fair-haired barbarian, with the brand to burn, the
sword to slay, and the hands to pillage. Or, like the Philistine lords,
they caroused and made merry, unwotting of that stern, moody, blind
Samson, sitting apart, yonder, with his hair all a-growing, and soon to
arise in his might and pull the house down on their gluttonous heads.
Or, like Belshazzar’s feasters, they were drunk in vessels of gold and
silver, while the fingers of a man’s hand were writing on the wall, and
the Medes and Persians were at the gate.
It may easily be imagined that in such a belly-god temple--such a
house of feasting and wassail--the cook was a personage of great power
and importance. Pomponius Cotta had simply the best cook not only
in Genoa, but in Magna Græcia--not only in Magna Græcia, but in the
whole Italian peninsula. But no man-cook had he--no haughty, stately,
magister coquinæ, no pedant in Apicius or bigoted believer in Lucullus.
Yet Pomponius was proud and happy in the possession of a culinary
treasure--a real cordon-bleu, a Mrs. Glasse of the dark ages, a Miss
Acton of antiquity, a Mrs. Rumball of Romanity; and this was no other
than a little slave girl whom they called Zita.
We have all heard of the cook who boasted that he could serve up a
leathern shoe in twenty-seven different phases of sauce and cookery.
I never believed in him, and always set him down as a vapouring
fanfaroon--a sort of copper-stewpan captain of cookery. But I have a
firm belief that little Zita would have made everything out of anything
or nothing culinary; that her stewed pump-handles would have been
delicious, her salmi of bath-brick exquisite, her croquettes of Witney
blanket unapproachable, her back hair en papillote a dish fit for a
king. She cooked such irresistible dishes for the noble Pomponius that
he frequently wept, and would have given her her freedom had he not
been afraid that she would be off and be married: that the noble Domina
Pomponia was jealous of her, and would have led her a sorry life, had
she dared to cross her husband; that the guests of the Pomponian house
wrote bad sapphics and dactylics in her praise, and would have given
her necklaces of pearl and armlets of gold for gifts, but that the
Roman finances were in rather an embarrassed condition just then, and
that poor trust was dead with the Genoese jewellers.
Little Zita was very pretty; she must have been pretty--and she was.
She was as symmetrical as one of Pradier’s Bacchantes--as ripe and
blooming as the grapes they press; but as pure as the alabaster of
which they are made. Her complexion was as delicately, softly tinted
as one of Mr. Gibson’s Anglo-Roman statues; her long hair, when she
released it from its confining fillet, hung down about her like a
king’s mantle; she had wrists and ankles that only gold or gems were
worthy to embrace: she had a mouth like a Cupid’s bow, and eyes like
almonds dyed in ebony; and teeth that were the gates of ivory of
the dreams of love, and nails like mother of pearl. She danced like
Arbuscula, and sang like Galeria Coppiola; and she cooked, like an
angel--as she is.
None could serve up in such style the great standard dishes of Roman
cookery. The wild boar of Troy, with honey, oil, flour and garum; the
Campanian sow, fed from golden troughs, stuffed with chestnuts and
spices, and brought to table whole with her nine little sucking pigs
disposed around her in sweet sauce; the vol au vents of peacocks’
tongues, and ortolans’ eyes, and beccaficos’ brains. Yet, though great
in these, she excelled in fanciful, ravishing, gem-like dishes--in what
the French call “surprises”--in culinary epigrams, edible enigmas,
savoury fables, poems that you could eat and drink. She had sauces,
the secrets of which have gone to Paradise with her; she had feats of
legerdemain in compounding dishes that no life-long apprenticeship
could teach. And, withal, she was so saving, so economical, so cleanly
in her arrangements, that her kitchen was like a street in the clean
village of Brock (I should not like to pass half an hour even in
Velour’s kitchen); and her noble master had the satisfaction of knowing
that he gave the mightiest “spreads” in Genoa at anything but an
unreasonable or ruinous expense.
She was as honest as a child’s smile, and was as regardless of kitchen
stuff, perquisites, Christmas boxes from tradesmen, and the dangerous
old crones who hung about the area and cried hare-skins, as your
own cook, madam, I hope may be. And, above all, little Zita had no
followers, had boxed the major-domo’s ears for offering her a pair of
fillagree ear-rings, and was exceeding pious.
Now, a pious cook is not considered, in these sceptical days, as a
very great desideratum. A pious cook not unfrequently refuses to
cook a Sunday’s dinner, and entertains a serious grenadier on Sunday
evening. I have seen many a kitchen drawer in which the presence of
a hymn-book, and the “Cook’s Spiritual Comforter” (price ninepence
per hundred for distribution) did not exclude the company of much
surreptitious cold fat and sundry legs of fowls that were not picked
clean. Serious cooks occasionally wear their mistresses’ black silk
stockings to go to chapel in; my aunt had a serious cook who drank; and
there is a legend in our family of a peculiarly evangelical cook who
could not keep her hands off other people’s pomatum. But little Zita
was sincerely, unfeignedly, cheerfully, devotedly pious. She did not
neglect her duties to pray: she rose up early in the morning before the
cock crew, while her masters were sunk in drunken sleep, and prayed
for herself and for them, then went to her daily labour with vigorous
heart of grace. There are some of us who pray, as grudgingly performing
a certain duty, and doing it, but no more--some of us as an example
(and what an example!) to others--some through mere habit (and those
are in a bad case)--some (who shall gainsay it?) in hypocrisy; but do
we not all, Scribes and Pharisees, Publicans and Sinners, number among
our friends, among those we know, some few good really pious souls who
strike us with a sort of awe and reverent respect; who do their good
deeds before we rise, or after we retire to rest; creep into heaven the
back way, but are not the less received there with trumpets and crowns
of glory?
Such was little Saint Zita. She was, I have said, truly pious. In an
age when there was as yet but one Ritual, before dissent and drums
ecclesiastic existed, Zita thought it her bounden duty to abide by
and keep all the fasts and festivals of the church as ordained by the
bishops, priests, and deacons. For she was not book-learned, this poor
little cook-maid, and had but these three watchwords for a rule of
conduct--Faith, Duty, and Obedience.
It is in the legend that she would decoy the little white-haired,
blue-eyed children of the barbarian soldiers into her kitchen, and
there, while giving them sweetmeats and other goodies, teach them to
lisp little Latin prayers, and tell over the rosary, and kiss the
crucifix appended to it. And she would have assuredly have fallen under
the grave displeasure of the heaven-born Sir Robert W. Carden, and have
been specially pointed at in his proposed Act of Parliament for making
almsgiving penal, since she bestowed the major part of her wages in
gifts to beggars, unmindful whether they were christian or pagan; and,
for a certainty, the strong-minded would have sneered at her, and the
wearers of phylacteries would have frowned on her, for she thought it a
grave sin to disobey the edict of the church that forbade the eating of
flesh on Friday and other appointed fasts. Pomponius Cotta, it must be
acknowledged, was troubled with no such scruples. He would have rated
his cook soundly, and perchance scourged her, if she had served him up
meagre fare on the sixth day of the week; yet I find it in the legend
that little Zita was enabled by her own skill, and, doubtless, by
celestial assistance, to perpetrate a pious fraud upon this epicurean
Roman. The Fridays’ dinners were as rich and succulent, and called
forth as loud encomia as those of the other days, yet not one scrap
of meat, one drop of carnal gravy, did Zita employ in the concoction
thereof. Fish, and eggs, and divers mushrooms, truffles and ketchups,
became, in the hands of the saintly cook, susceptible of giving the
most meaty flavours. ’Tis said that Zita invented burnt onions--those
grand culinary deceptions! And though they were in reality making
meagre, as good Christians should do, Pomponius and his boon companions
thought they were feasting upon venison and poultry and choice roasts.
This is one of the secrets that died with Saint Zita. I never tasted
sorrel soup that had even the suspicion of a flavour of meat about it;
and though I have heard much of the rice fritters and savoury soups of
the Lancashire vegetarians, I doubt much of their ability to conceal
the taste of the domestic cabbage and the homely onion.
Now it fell out in the year of redemption--I have not the slightest
idea--that P. Maremnius Citronius Ostendius, a great gastronome and
connoisseur in oysters, came from Asia to visit his kinsman Pomponius.
There was some talk of his marrying the beautiful Flavia Pomponilia,
the eldest daughter of the Pomponian house (she was as jealous of
Zita as Fleur de Lys was of Esmeralda, and would have thrust golden
pins into her, à-la-mode Romaine, but for fear of her father); but
at all events Ostendius was come down from Asia to Genoa, and there
was to be a great feast in honour of his arrival. Ostendius had an
aldermanic abdomen under his toga, had a voice that reminded you
of fruity port, bees-wings in his eyes, a face very like collared
brawn, and wore a wig. Those adjuncts to beauty were worn, ladies and
gentlemen, fifteen hundred years ago. Ay! look in at the Egyptian Room
of the British Museum, London, and you shall find wigs older than
that. He had come from Asia, where he was reported to have partaken
of strange dishes--birds of paradise, gryphons, phœnixes, serpents,
elephants--what do I know but he despised not the Persicos apparatus,
and was not a man to be trifled with in his victuals! Pomponius Cotta
called his cook into his sanctum, and gave her instructions as to the
banquet, significantly telling her what she might expect if she failed
in satisfying him and his gastronomical guests. Poor Zita felt a cold
shudder as she listened to the threats which, in lazy Latin, her noble
master lavished upon her. But she determined, less through fear of
punishment than a sincere desire of doing her duty, to exert herself
to the very utmost in the preparation of the feast. Perhaps there may
have been a little spice of vanity in this determination; perhaps she
was actuated by a little harmless desire to please the difficult
Ostendius, and so prove to him that Pomponius Cotta had a slave who was
the best cook in Genoa and in Italy. Why not? I am one who, believing
that all is vanity, think that the world as it is could not well get
on without some vanity. By which I mean an honest moderate love of and
pleasure in approbation. I think we could much easier dispense with
money than with this. When I see a conceited man, I think him to be a
fool; but when I meet a man who tells me he does not rejoice when he is
praised for the good book he has written, or the good picture he has
painted, or the good deed he has done, I know him to be a humbug, and a
mighty dangerous one to his fellow-creatures.
Flowers, wax torches, perfumes, rich tapestries, cunning musicians--all
were ordered for the feast to the guest who was come from Asia. The
piscator brought fish in abundance; the lignarius brought wood and
charcoal to light the cooking furnaces withal; the venator brought game
and venison; the sartor stitched unceasingly at vestments of purple
and fine linen; the slaves who fed ordinarily upon salsamentum or salt
meat revelled in blithe thoughts of the rich fragments that would
fall to their share on the morrow of the banquet. It need scarcely be
said that Zita the cook had a whole army of cook’s mates, scullions,
marmitons, plate-scrapers, and bottle-washers under her command.
These peeled the vegetables, these jointed the meat, these strained
the soups and jellies; but to none did she ever confide the real
cooking of the dinner. Her spoon was in every casserole, her spatula
in every sauce-boat; she knew the exact number of mushrooms to every
gratin, and of truffles to every turkey. Believe me--in the works of
great artists there is little vicarious handiwork. Asses say that
Mr. Stanfield painted the scenery of Acis and Galatea by means of a
speaking-trumpet from the shilling gallery, his assistants working on
the stage. Asses say that Carême used to compose his dinners reclining
on a crimson velvet couch, while his nephew mixed the magic ingredients
in silver stewpans. Asses say that all the hammering and chiselling of
Praxiteles’ statues were done by workmen, and that the sculptor only
polished up the noses and finger tips with a little marble dust. Don’t
believe such tales. In all great works the master hand is every where.
On the morning of the banquet, early, Zita went to market, and sent
home stores of provisions, which her assistants knew well how to
advance through their preparatory stages. Then, knowing that she had
plenty of time before her, the pious little cook--though she had
already attended matins--went to church to have a good pray. In the
simplicity of her heart, she thought she would render up special
thanks for all the good dinners she had cooked, and pray as specially
that this evening’s repast should be the very best and most succulent
she might ever prepare. You see she was but a poor, ignorant, little
slave-girl, and she lived in the dark ages.
Zita went to church, heard high mass, confessed, and then, going into
a little dark chapel by herself, fell down on her knees before the
mother of all virgins, the Queen of Heaven. She prayed, and prayed,
and prayed so long, so earnestly, so devoutly, that she quite forgot
how swiftly the hours fleet by, how impossible it is to overtake them.
She prayed and prayed till she lost all consciousness and memory of
earthly things, of earthly ties and duties, till the vaulted roof
seemed to open, till she seemed to see, through a golden network, a sky
of lapis-lazuli all peopled with angelic beings in robes of dazzling
white; till she heard soft sounds of music such as could only proceed
from harps played by celestial hands; till the statue of the Queen of
Heaven seemed to smile upon her and bless her; till she was no longer a
cook and a slave, but an ecstatic in communion with the saints.
She prayed till the mortal sky without, from the glare of noonday
took soberer hues; till the western horizon began to blush for Zita’s
tardiness; till the great blue Mediterranean sea grew purple, save
where the sunset smote it; till the white palaces of Genoa were tinged
with pink, as if the sky had rained roses. She prayed till the lazy
dogs which had been basking in the sun rose and shook themselves and
raised their shiftless eyes as if to wonder where the sun was; till
the barbarian soldiers, who had been lounging on guard-house benches,
staggered inside, and fell to dicing and drinking; till hired assassins
woke up on their straw pallets, and, rubbing their villanous eyes,
began to think that it was pretty nearly time to go a murdering; till
cut-purses’ fingers began to itch premonitorily; till maidens watched
the early moon, and longed for it to be sole sovereign of the heavens,
that the trysting-time might come; till the young spendthrift rejoiced
that another day was to come, and the old sage sighed that another day
was gone; till sick men quarrelled with their nurses for closing their
casements, and the birds grew drowsy, and the flowers shut themselves
up in secresy, and the frog began to speak to his neighbour, and the
glow-worm lighted his lamp.
She prayed till it was dusk, and almost dark, till the vesper bell
began to ring, when she awoke from out her trance, and not a dish of
the dinner was cooked.
And she hurried home, weeping, ah! so bitterly. For Zita knew her
duty towards her neighbour as the road towards Heaven. She knew that
there were times for all things, and that she had prayed too much and
too long. Punishment she did not so much dread as the reproaches of
her own conscience for the neglect of her duty. At length, faltering
and stumbling in the momentarily increasing darkness, she reached the
Pomponian house, which was all lighted up from top to bottom. “Ah!”
thought she, “the major domo has, at least, attended to his business.”
She hurried into a small side court-yard where the kitchen was, and
there she found all her army of assistants: the cook’s mates, the
scullions, the marmitons, the plate-scrapers, and the bottle-washers,
all fast asleep, with their ladles, their knives, and their spits
on benches and door-steps and in corners. “Ah!” cried little Zita,
wringing her hands; “waiting for me, and quite worn out with fatigue!”
Then, stepping among them without awakening them, she approached the
great folding-doors of the kitchen, and tried the handle; but the
doors were locked, and through the keyholes and hinges, the chinks and
crannies of the portal, there came a rich, powerful, subtle odour, as
of the best dinner that ever was cooked. She thought she understood it
all. Enraged at her absence, her master had sent for Maravilla, the
corpulent female cook of Septimus Pylorus, his neighbour, to prepare
the dinner, or, perhaps, the great P. Maremnius Citronius Ostendius
had himself condescended to assume the cook’s cap and apron, and
was at that moment engaged within, with locked doors, in blasting
her professional reputation for ever. She was ruined as a cook, a
servant--a poor little fatherless girl, with nought but her virtue and
her cookery for a dower. Unhappy little Zita!
She ran back, through the court-yard to the great banquetting saloon,
and there, lo, she found the table decked, and the soft couches ranged,
the flowers festooned, the rich tapestries hanging, and the perfumes
burning in golden censers. And there, too, she found the proud Domina
Pomponia, in gala raiment, who greeted her with a smile of unwonted
benevolence, saying:
“Now, Zita, the guests are quite ready for the banquet; and I am sure,
from the odour which we can smell even here, that it will be the very
best dinner that ever was cooked.”
Then came from an inner chamber the fruity port-wine voice of
Ostendius, crying,
“Ay, ay, I am sure it will be the very best dinner that ever was
cooked;” and the voice of Pomponius Cotta answered him gaily, that
“Little Zita was not the best cook in Genoa for nothing,” and that he
would not part with her for I don’t know how many thousand sesterces.
Poor Zita saw in this only a cruel jest. For certain another cook
had been engaged in her place, and she herself would be had up after
the banquet, taunted with its success, confronted with her rival,
and perhaps scourged to death amid the clatter of drinking-cups. Her
eyes blinded with tears, she descended again to the court-yard, and
fervently, though despairingly, breathed one brief prayer to our Lady
of the Chapel. She had scarcely done so, when the great folding-doors
of the kitchen flew open, and there issued forth a tremendous cloud of
ambrosial vapour, radiant, golden, roseate, azure, in which celestial
odours were mingled with the unmistakeable smell of the very best
dinner that ever was cooked. And lo! hovering in the cloud, the rapt
eye of little Saint Zita seemed to descry myriads of little airy
figures in white caps and jackets, even like unto cooks, but who all
had wings and little golden knives at their girdles. And she heard the
same soft music that had stolen upon her ears in the chapel; and as the
angelic cooks fluttered out of the kitchen, it seemed as though each
little marmiton saluted the blushing cheek of the trembling saint with
a soft and soothing kiss.
At the same time the army of earthly cook’s assistants awoke as one
scullion, and without so much as yawning, took their places at the
dresser-board, and composedly began to dish the dinner. And little
Zita, hurrying from furnace to furnace, and lifting up the lids of
casserole and bain-marie pan, found, done to a turn, a dinner even such
as she with all her culinary genius would never have dreamt of.
Of course it was a miracle. Of course it was the very best dinner ever
dressed: what else could it have been with such cooks? They talk of it
to this day in Genoa; though I am sorry to say the Genoese cooks have
not profited by the example, and do not seek to emulate it. They have
the best maccaroni, and dress it worse than any people in Europe.
The legend ought properly to end with a relation of how Pomponius
Cotta gave his little cook her freedom, how the guests loaded her with
presents, and how she married the major domo, and was the happy mother
of many good cooks and notable housewives. But the grim old monkish
tradition has it, that little Zita died a virgin, and, alas, a martyr!
But she was canonised at her death; and even as St. Crispin looks after
the interests of cobblers, and St. Barbe has taken artillerymen under
his special patronage, so the patroness of cooks has ever been little
Saint Zita.
Now ready, price Five Shillings and Sixpence, cloth boards,