[Illustration:  Fig. 130.—­Grand Ceremonial Banquet at the Court of France in the Fourteenth Century, archaeological Restoration from Miniatures and Narratives of the Period.

From the “Dictionnaire du Mobilier Francais” of M. Viollet-Leduc.]

From the establishment of the Franks in Gaul down to the fifteenth century inclusive, there were but two meals a day; people dined at ten o’clock in the morning, and supped at four in the afternoon.  In the sixteenth century they put back dinner one hour and supper three hours, to which many people objected.  Hence the old proverb:—­

  “Lever a six, diner a dix,
  Souper a six, coucher a dix,
  Fait vivre l’homme dix fois dix.”

  ("To rise at six, dine at ten,
  Sup at six, to bed at ten,
  Makes man live ten times ten.”)

[Illustration:  Fig. 131.—­Banner of the Corporation of Pastrycooks of Tonnerre.]

Hunting.

  Venery and Hawking.—­Origin of Aix-la-Chapelle.—­Gaston Phoebus and his
  Book.—­The Presiding Deities of Sportsmen.—­Sporting Societies and
  Brotherhoods.—­Sporting Kings:  Charlemagne, Louis IX., Louis XI.,
  Charles VIII., Louis XII., Francis I., &c.—­Treatise on
  Venery.—­Sporting Popes.—­Origin of Hawking.—­Training Birds.—­Hawking
  Retinues.—­Book of King Modus.—­Technical Terms used in
  Hawking.—­Persons who have excelled in this kind of Sport.—­Fowling.

By the general term hunting is included the three distinct branches of an art, or it may be called a science, which dates its origin from the earliest times, but which was particularly esteemed in the Middle Ages, and was especially cultivated in the glorious days of chivalry.

Venery, which is the earliest, is defined by M. Elzear Blaze as “the science of snaring, taking, or killing one particular animal from amongst a herd.” Hawking came next.  This was not only the art of hunting with the falcon, but that of training birds of prey to hunt feathered game.  Lastly, l’oisellerie (fowling), which, according to the author of several well-known works on the subject we are discussing, had originally no other object than that of protecting the crops and fruits from birds and other animals whose nature it was to feed on them.

Venery will be first considered.  Sportsmen always pride themselves in placing Xenophon, the general, philosopher, and historian, at the head of sporting writers, although his treatise on the chase (translated from the Greek into Latin under the title of “De Venatione"), which gives excellent advice respecting the training of dogs, only speaks of traps and nets for capturing wild animals.  Amongst the Greeks Arrian and Oppian, and amongst the Romans, Gratius Faliscus and Nemesianus, wrote on the same subject.  Their works, however, except in a few isolated or scattered passages, do not contain anything about venery properly so called, and the first historical information on the subject is to be found in the records of the seventh century.