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Updated: May 13, 2025
Hereabouts we do not give them such high-sounding names as you apply to them, we call them hashes or stews. Ofatulena, the wife of my villa-farm bailiff, devised them and prepared them. She is famous hereabouts for her cooking." "What," cried Tanno, "a woman cook! Never saw a woman cook, never heard of one, never read of one.
The clamps fasten instantly and release at a touch, but hold tenaciously when shut." Under the arcade my household had gathered to say farewell and wish me good luck. I spoke briefly to each and thanked Ofatulena for her distinguished cookery, both in respect to the credit her masterpieces had done me at dinner and also for the taste of her rolls, which yet lingered in mouth and memory.
Oddly enough, while he had closely questioned himself and my other eight tenants as to the date of my departure for Rome and as to whether they had seen me since they last saw me in Rome, and while he had questioned Uturia and Ofatulena as to whether they had seen me since I set off for Rome, he had somehow omitted or forgotten to ask Ofatulenus the same questions, so that he had been able to answer truthfully the only questions asked of him.
I sent for Ofatulena and she came in, pleased and embarrassed, flushed brick-red all over her full moon of a face, diffident and elated, trembling and giggling. Tanno questioned her and satisfied himself that she had prepared the dishes which had won his approbation and also that she was no hit-or-miss cook, but a real artist in the kitchen, and really knew what she was doing.
I found Ofatulena, wife of the Villa-farm bailiff, in violent altercation with my head-cook. He asserted that she had no business in his kitchen and must get out. Her contention was that she, as bailiff's wife, was above all slaves whatever, that she knew her place and that when a distinguished stranger visited the Villa she would show him what old-fashioned Sabine cooking was like, so she would.
Ofatulena herself is so scatter- brained that she will never be sure that two loaves vanished from her oven; I doubt if she will so much as suspect any loss. But I cannot repeat that depletion of her baking tonight; she might talk.
Then he displayed the total of his plunder: hats, with brims neither too broad nor too narrow, the best pattern if one was to have only one hat, worn and battered enough to suit us as being inconspicuous, yet nowhere torn, broken or slit; a tunic and cloak apiece, about the oldest and most patched in my villa-farm storage-loft, such as Ofatulena would hand out to newly bought and untried slaves; three quilts, as bad as the cloaks and tunics, yet, like them, fairly serviceable and far from worn out; the kid- skin of wine, a whole loaf of bread and the remains of the one we had been eating, what was left of a cheese and another whole; a little, tall, narrow jar of olive oil; a small bag of olives; a tiny box full of salt, the box of beechwood and about the size of a man's three fingers; a whetstone, a pair of rusty scissors; two small beechwood cups; a little copper dipper; some rags, old and worn, but perfectly clean; and a flageolet!
The cook had had, through Agathemer, my directions for a formal dinner and he declared that one more guest made no difference and that his dinner was good enough for anybody. I compromised by telling him to continue as he had planned, but to allow Ofatulena to prepare one dish for each course and to add to each one of her own.
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