Wanderings By the Loire

still filled with curiosity as insatiable as their own appetite?curiosity to know how they contrive to stow all they eat. While we, with the national abstemiousness of John Bull, are concocting our journal over a concoction of coffee and boiled milk, the same individuals whom we are to meet at a luxurious dinner at five o'clock are busy with their morning meal (it being now between nine and ten) of soup, fish, fowl, joints, made-dishes, and dessert, with wine and beer. The stomach of a Frenchman is not only stronger than that of an Englishman, but more capacious. The latter is generally satisfied with a few glasses of wine during dinner, while the former consumes habitually, at the same meal, a quantity of wine and water, seldom amounting to a great deal less than half a gallon. A gentleman, the other day, took pains to account to the company for his extra appetite, informing them that itwas occasioned by his having eaten nothing that morning to breakfast?nothing save a few eggs. As for the poorer classes, it is the same case with them in regard to quantity; but water forms the staple commodity both of their meat and drink. Almost any thing that grows in the fields, and thus deserves the name of a vegetable, suffices to make their soup ; and if they can pour in a little milk, they think themselves feasted?not to talk of oil or butter, which form the summum bonum of their gastronomic ambition. After breakfast, we sallied forth to wander along the right bank o... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.