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Twice in the week, namely on Fridays and Saturdays, we have fast-day fare; but if the feast of a particular saint falls during the week, a thing that frequently occurs, we hold three fast-days, the one of the saint's day being kept as a time of abstinence. The fare on fast-days consists of a dish of lentils, an omelette, and two dishes of salt fish, one hot and the other cold.
The early records of our General Court are thickly strown with appointments of Fast-Days that the people might discover the especial occasion of God's anger toward them, manifested in the blight of some expected harvest, or in a scourge upon the cattle in the field.
Sanguinary laws were enacted against libertinism; profane pictures were burned; drapery was put on indecorous statues; the theatres were shut up; fast-days were numerous; and the Parliament resolved that no person should be admitted into any public employment, unless the House should be first satisfied of his vital godliness. We know what was the end of this training.
We bought some, but there did not seem to be many other purchasers. Indeed, we found, when we had been longer in the country, that a few pence would buy all sorts of church indulgences, from the permission to eat meat on fast-days up to plenary absolution in the hour of death; and the trade, once so flourishing here, is almost used up.
In Lent they never eat till after sunset; their fasts are the more severe because milk and butter are forbidden them, and no reason or necessity whatsoever can procure them a permission to eat meat, and their country affording no fish, they live only on roots and pulse. On fast-days they never drink but at their meat, and the priests never communicate till evening, for fear of profaning them.
The officers who guarded them took away their chessmen and cards because some of them were named kings and queens, and all the books with coats of arms on them; they refused to get ointment for a gathering on Madame Elisabeth's arm; they, would not allow her to make a herb-tea which she thought would strengthen her niece; they declined to supply fish or eggs on fast-days or during Lent, bringing only coarse fat meat, and brutally replying to all remonstances, "None but fools believe in that stuff nowadays."
Under ordinary circumstances he was a good-humored, kindly man, always polite his manners offering an agreeable contrast to those of some of our own frontiersmen, with a ready smile and laugh, and ever eager to join in any merrymaking. On Sundays and fast-days he was summoned to the little parish church by the tolling of the old bell in the small wooden belfry.
The bishops in France are said to have had the most luxurious dinners imaginable on what were erroneously styled fast-days; and their cooks had such a reputation for their skill, that the having served
First and last, this was done three times, and then the image was completed, eighty cubits in height, and eight cubits at the base from knee to knee of the crossed legs. On fast-days it emits an effulgent light. Here it is, to be seen now as of old.
These three fast-days in the week are to me martyrdom. One must have a little variety; my husband is very fastidious. If we did not have water-fowl I should lose my head. How do you get on, dear? Madame Oh! with me it is very simple, provided I do not make my husband leaner; he eats anything. You know, Augustus is not very much Her Friend Not very much!
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