The XVIIIth century; its institutions, customs, and costumes France, 1700-1789 . se important personages as richly clad, wearing a sword, witha diamond ring on his finger, and playing with a gold was asked whether he was not some great personage, to whichhe replied : I am content to serve a great man ; I am his maitredhotel. He went on to say that in going over his accounts for thepreceding year, he found Monsignor had spent a hundred thousandcrowns. The table expenditure was even greater at the houses ofcertain noblemen and financiers, for a single dinner given by thePrince de So
The XVIIIth century; its institutions, customs, and costumes France, 1700-1789 . se important personages as richly clad, wearing a sword, witha diamond ring on his finger, and playing with a gold was asked whether he was not some great personage, to whichhe replied : I am content to serve a great man ; I am his maitredhotel. He went on to say that in going over his accounts for thepreceding year, he found Monsignor had spent a hundred thousandcrowns. The table expenditure was even greater at the houses ofcertain noblemen and financiers, for a single dinner given by thePrince de Soubise to the King and the Court cost more than ;^ the kitchens and offices of one of these great houses,Abbe Coyer says: I was taken to the kitchens, and requested to THE KITCHEN AND THE TABLE. 375 observe the good taste of the master of the house. It is the only-part of the establishment which is shown to visitors. Elegant, com-modious, scruiDulously clean, solidly constructed, nothing is wantingin this vast workshop of Comus, a modern work of art in which the. Tig. 241.—A supper; after Masquelicr.(From the collection of the Chansotts de Laitoitfe, 4 voU., in 8vo.) architect has displayed all the resources of his genius. Abbe Coyeromitted to describe the furnaces, which were the ever-smoking altarof gastronomy, the ceaselessly-revolving spits, and the rows of copperand iron saucepans which adorned the walls. To show the extentof the kitchen utensils in a large house, it may be mentioned that, toprepare a banquet given by the Marquis de Seignela) at his resi-dence at Sceaux to Louis XIV., thirty-six cooks and assistants used 376 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. sixty small saucepans, twenty round saucepans large and small,twenty boilers of various sizes, and thirty spits. So many additions had been made to the luxuries of the tablesince the time of Louis XIV., that Duclos declared in his Memoirs : If the people who lived sixty years ago could revisitParis they would not
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