What if one should come provided with one of those vases consecrated to Bacchus, where artificial cold ices the madrin, the strawberry, and pine-apple juice, those delicious flavors which spread through the whole system a luxury unknown to the profane.

We have not, however, reached the last term of progression of pleasure.

Ladies.

There are times when our wives, sisters, and cousins are invited to share in these amusements.  At the appointed hour, light carriages, prancing horses, etc., hearing ladies collect.  The toilette of the ladies is half military, and half coquette.  The professor will, if he be observant, catch a glimpse of things not intended for his eye.

The door of the carriages will soon be opened, and a glimpse will be had of pates de Perigord, the wonders of Strasburg, the delicacies of d’Achard, and all that the best laboratories produce that is transportable.

They have not forgotten foaming champagne, a fit ornament for the hand of beauty.  They sit on the grass—­corks fly, all laugh, jest, and are happy.  Appetite, this emenation of heaven, gives to the meal a vivacity foreign to the drawing-room, however well decorated it may be.

All, however, must end; the oldest person present gives the signal; all arise, men take their guns, and the ladies their hats--all go, and the ladies disappear until night.

I have hunted in the centre of France, and in the very depths of the departments.  I have seen at the resting places carriage loads of women of radiant beauty, and others mounted on a modest ass, such as composes the fortunes of the people of Montmorency.  I have seen them first laugh at the inconveniences of the mode of transportation, and then spread on the lawn a turkey, with transparent jelly, and a salad ready prepared.  I have seen them dance around a fire lighted for the occasion, and have participated in the pleasures of this gypsy sport.  I am sure so much attraction with so little luxury is never met with elsewhere.

Les haltes de la chasse are a yet virgin subject which we have only touched, we leave the subject to any one who pleases to take a fancy to it.

Meditation XVI.

On digestion.

We never see what we eat, says an old adage, except what we digest.

How few, however, know what digestion is, though it is a necessity equalizing rich and poor, the shepherd and the king.

The majority of persons who, like M. Jourdan, talked prose without knowing it, digest without knowing how; for them I make a popular history of digestion, being satisfied that M. Jourdan was much better satisfied when his master told him that he wrote prose.  To he fully acquainted with digestion, one must know hoth its antecedents and consequents.

Ingestion.

Appetite, hunger, and thirst, warn us that the hody needs restoration; pain, that universal monitor, never ceases to torment us if we do not obey it.