A woman opened the gates of an enlightened age; it was Catherine, the
daughter of the celebrated Lorenzo de Medici, niece of Leo the Tenth,
then in all the bloom of beauty. Accompanied by a troop of perfumers,
painters, astrologers, poets, and cooks, she crossed the Alps, and
whilst Bullan planned the Tuileries, Berini recovered from oblivion
those sauces which, for many ages, had been lost. Endowed with all the
gifts of fortune, the mother and the wife of kings, nature had also
gifted her with a palate, whose intuitive sensibility seldom falls to
the lot of sovereigns. In consequence of which, after having driven
before her this troop of male and female soothsayers, who pretended to
foretel the future, she consulted her _maître d'hôtel_, about some roast
meat brought from luxurious Florence; and dipped in a rich sauce the
same hand that held the reins of the empire, and which Roussard compared
to the rosy fingers of Aurora! Let the foolish vulgar laugh at the
importance which the queen-mother seems to place in the art of cooking;
but they have not considered that it is at table, in the midst of the
fumes of Burgundy, and the savoury odour of rich dishes, that she
meditated the means of quelling a dangerous faction, or the destruction
of a man, who disturbed her repose. It was during dinner she had an
interview with the Duke of Alba, with whom she resolved on the massacre
of St. Bartholomew.

Not long after the massacre of St. Bartholomew the throne was occupied
by Henry de Valois, brother to Charles the Ninth, and son of Catherine.
He was a prince of good appetite, a lover of wine and good cheer,
qualities which his mother had carefully fostered and cultivated, that
she alone might hold the reigns of government. Henry de Valois spent
whole days at table, and the constellations of the kitchen shone with
the greatest splendour under this gourmand king. We date from the
beginning of his reign the invention of the fricandeau, generally