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 138 cook is, in his eyes, a true scientist, with mighty capacities for good and evil. He believes, with Baudelaire, that such a one should have the soul of a poet, and—like the too fastidious Parisian, who declared that between Mme. du Deffand's chef and the Marquise de Brinvilliers "there was only the difference of intention"—Savarin has no words of reproach strong enough for those who debase and shame their noble calling. He is prompt to recognize the exigencies of a slender purse, and unwearying in his efforts to provide menus fitted to its limitations; but his notions of economy are somewhat like those of the little French princess, who said that rather than starve she would live on bread and cheese. The famous omelette au thon, for instance, with all its air of pastoral simplicity, contains the roes of two carp, a piece of tunny, an eschalot, twelve eggs, and a number of other ingredients which would hardly recommend it to a poor country parsonage. As for the Abbé Chevrier's spinach, which was warmed up with butter for seven days before it reached the acme of