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202 fulfil the conditions required. Over three hundred guests were seated, or rather reclining, on couches, while those who had been elected to wait for the night attended dutifully upon the guests.

Hesperia explained to her new guests that this was no servitude, for that she, with her husband and the guests there assembled, would take their turn of waiting at other feasts.

"We are no slaves, and have no slaves; those who wait upon us to-night occupy the same positions as we do. It is our pride to be ministers and servants to each other. We cannot lie here and wait upon ourselves, therefore we take our turn to be waited upon and to be waiters. The cook who superintends this feast is the greatest that ever existed. It is his glory to concoct from simple rudiments dishes that formerly he created on earth from fowl, fish and flesh; and although my husband was once a mighty painter, he cannot think himself greater than the genius who gives to us this delight.

What a dream of gastronomy that repast was, Philip thought, as he partook of dish after dish, and he was no mean judge of the pleasures of eating. He had arrived at the age when men pay attention to these details, when to a pious gastronomer heaven would be a dreary desert without dinner.

"Do you think that a taste or a pleasure which does no wrong can be a sin?" said Hesperia. "The saints of the Roman Church and the other earth faiths advocate the torturing of the flesh, yet how grievously are they wronging the Maker of all these things when they do so. He gives us our instinct, which may be cultivated into a high art. It may be painting, poetry, sculpture, music or eating. He has provided these