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Updated: May 16, 2025
On the Saturday the feast was closed by a state dinner whose composition taxed Priscilla as head cook to the limit of her resources, and with flushed cheek and knitted brow she moved about among her willing assitants with all the importance of a Bechamel, a Felix, the maître-d'hôtel of Cardinal Fesch with his two turbots, or luckless Vatel who fell upon his sword and died because he had no turbot at all; or even, rising in the grandeur of the comparison, we may liken her to Domitian, who, weary of persecuting Christians, one day called the Roman Senate together to decide with him upon the sauce with which another historic turbot should be dressed.
He had before him a large hamper filled with bottles, which he had just purchased at the cabaret with the sign of "L'Image-de-Notre-Dame." "Eh, but! that is Vatel! my maitre d'hotel!" said Fouquet to Gourville. "Yes, monseigneur," replied the latter. "What can he have been doing at the sign of L'Image-de-Notre-Dame?" "Buying wine, no doubt." "What! buy wine for me, at a cabaret?" said Fouquet.
There's not a Frenchman alive to match her. Vatel awaits her in Paradise with his arms extended; and may he wait long! Carling indulged his passion for the genuine by letting a flutter of real envy be seen. 'My wife would like to meet such a Frenchwoman. It must be a privilege to dine with him to know him.
Well, evil will come of it! you'll be the cause of some great calamity. Haven't I just seen your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the poor; and the talk is very bitter against you. They curse you every bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame.
She also understood various little mysteries, in the way of converting their berries and fruits of the wilderness into pleasant dishes; and Corporal Flint soon affirmed that it was a thousand pities she did not live in a garrison, which, agreeably to his view of things, was something like placing her at the comptoir of the Cafe de Paris, or of marrying her to some second Vatel.
Back to the days of the Grand Condé one reads of an extended visit made by Louis XIV to his principal courtier. It was at an expense of two hundred thousand écus that the welcoming fête was accomplished. Madame de Sévigné has recounted the event more graphically than any other chronicler, and it would be presumption to review it here at length. The incident of Vatel alone has become classic.
"Eh, monsieur," said Vatel, shrinking from monseigneur to monsieur with a degree of disdain: "your cellar is so well stocked that when certain of your guests dine with you they have nothing to drink." Fouquet, in great surprise, looked at Gourville. "What do you mean by that?"
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