marvellous services, and thereby letting it be inferred that the reward she would claim might be disproportionately high, and the elderly Marchioness, in the sudden awakening of what was with her a master passion, had allowed the true niggardliness of her nature to peep forth, and had disquieted Aspasie upon the amount of her gains, which she fully intended should be large. Each woman had betrayed herself; which is what mostly happens when persons of decided moral inferiority concert together for an evil purpose.

"The Dowager is not sufficiently in my power," was the form of internal speech in which Mlle. de Mourjonville's convictions on parting from Madame de Beauvoisin condensed themselves.

"That creature must be squeezed dry as an orange, and then thrown aside," was the deliberate conclusion of the Dowager upon that same occasion.

Which of the two rival powers was in the end to outwit the other, we shall see later; meanwhile, one or two of those infinitely small things occurred, whose insignificance is such that no one ever dreams of reverting to them as the cause of more weighty events.

Since the diplomatic conference to which his sister had summoned him a few weeks previously, M. de Moranges had held no further communication with that lady, whose dicta- | torial genius had, as we know, never possessed any attraction for him. He was more than ever pleased to have Olivier about him, and engrossed a very considerable portion of his nephew's time.

"I am afraid I shall have to give up my pleasant habits of life soon," said M. de Beauvoisin, in a hesitating kind of way, one evening, as he lounged about after his usual gracefully purposeless fashion in one of his uncle's apartments.

"Why?" inquired the uncle, with active anxiety; "does my niece mean to make you go to Barèges with her? She is ordered there, is she not?"

"Oh, that is all changed now," rejoined Olivier, with increasing embarrassment; for he had had time to remark the sudden pallor on Claudine's face, and the lynx-like look fixed upon his own by Aspasie.

"That is all altered; it is not Claire." (Beauvoisin named his wife in this spot, which his uncle never did; it was the difference between the two generations.) "It is not Claire," he added; "it is my mother. Claire is no longer going to Barèges; we are all going to Beauvoisin next week."

[Sept. 5, 1868.

"What for?" pursued M. de Moranges. "It has never been your custom to go down there before the autumn. What is to make the difference this year?"

The steady fire of Mlle. de Mourjonville's eyes (she was seated at a table behind M. de Moranges,) never ceased for an instant, and Olivier felt that his very bones were being searched by the gaze of those terribly ironical orbs.

"Well," he replied, not daring to look any way at all, "the difference is made by what, to me, is most supremely disagreeable by the sudden disappearance from the world of old Carpentier, and by the decision come to by the government to let the election take place in the second week in July. It is in yesterday's Moniteur."

M. de Moranges tapped his forehead with his hand.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed; "the deputation! Yes, I remember all about it now; and there is no help for us. Your mother will leave none of us in peace. But I thought there were to be no elections anywhere till November."

"So we all thought," said Olivier; "but some fancy seems to have seized our lords and masters, and the election is to take place directly; as I have told you, in the second week of next month."

"Well, my dear boy, what must be, must be," observed his uncle. "And however great a bore the whole thing is, count upon me; I will give you every help I can."

"And so Monsieur le Marquis is about to become the deputy for Savre-et-Merle?" insinuated Mlle. de Mourjonville, as, somewhat farther on in the evening, she handed him a glass of iced orangeade.

It was such a gentle tone in which the words were uttered, and such a look the speaker of them sent creeping all over the man she addressed! However, there was seemingly no unpleasantness between them, for they talked together a great deal that evening, without perceiving how intently they were watched by the master of the house.

A couple of days later, M. de Moranges had an interview with his sister touching the matter of the deputation, on which she was so intent. At its close,

"Adèle," said he, "you know I really do like Olivier-I like to have him about me--he's not bright, but he's safe, I have convinced myself of that-thoroughly safe! which is saying a vast deal as times go. Now, I should reproach myself if I did not give you a hint

that may be useful. Perhaps it would be wise to beware of Mlle. Aspasie-you know who it is I allude to." The Dowager nodded

assent.

"There is no danger in mere beauty for Olivier," propounded the experienced Marquis, -(oh! the vanity of all mere experience !) "he has a surfeit of that at home; his wife is certainly the loveliest woman in Paris, but a clever woman, a very clever woman like Mlle.de Mourjonville, may be dangerous to him. I show my anxiety for the well-being of our family by speaking as I am now doing, for the loss of that woman would be a terrible loss to me, a dislocation of my household indeed; but if you agree with me in thinking there may be danger, I will send her away directly."

"Not for worlds, Maurice! not for worlds!" retorted his sister expressively. "I know what the value of that kind of person must be to you-in your peculiar circumstances" and she looked demurely down; "and I would not deprive you of her under any consideration."

all things; and, in too many cases, we, his children, ignoring the fact that we live in more enlightened times, place unbounded faith in these traditions of the elders, and instil them into our children.

The old division of fungi, by the ignorant, was into mushrooms and toadstools: the former to be ranked as delicacies, the latter to be abhorred as poisonous. Modern science shows us that we may make our divisions of fungi by the thousand, and that though, as in other descriptions of plants, there are some that are noxious, yet the bulk are harmless, and many are excellent in a dietary point of view.

Botanists of the amateur order have toiled hard amongst wild-flowers, ferns, mosses, and algæ; heaths, too, have had their day, but, for some reason or other, fungi, which can show amongst their ranks beauty of form, tints of the most exquisite hue, scents of the sweetest, and flavours that would gratify the most sensual of gourmands, have been neglected, with some few exceptions, where, from their gastronomic value, they have, as it were, forced their way into notice. We are, most of us, familiar with the ordinary field mushroom (Agaricus campestris), the morel (Morchella esculenta), and the truffle (Tuber æstivum); but though

"No!" retorted she; "and that will save him. It is always your over-intelligent imaginative men who get ensnared and carried away. I have taken good care Olivier should have no imagination; but thank you all the same, dear Maurice."

This was the new card Destiny had been putting into Mlle. Aspasie's hand without her guessing it.

BR

STRANGE FOOD.

READ mostly, sir; and, sometimes, potatoes. We generally manage a bit o' meat once a week, though."

"Then why, when in autumn, woods and fields produce abundance of these, do you not gather them to eat with your bread and potatoes?"

"What, them, sir?" (with a smile of pitying contempt); "them's toadstools: them's poison!"

"How do you know that?"

Oh, my father," &c., &c.—the old authority for every prejudice and fable, handed down from time immemorial. "My father" knew

rank, custom and prejudice have assigned them the topmost dignities; while fungi equal to, and surpassing them in flavour, are year by year allowed to rot by the ton in woods and fields, because " my father" said that they were poison.

The Russians and Italians seem thoroughly to understand these wonderful, but neglected, productions of nature; evidently seeing the peculiar position they hold-partaking strangely, though vegetable, of the nitrogenous compounds of animal life, that they are not only highly nutritious, but wonderfully satisfying, and, in many cases, so flesh-like in flavour and odour, that he who partakes of the banquet can easily be deceived.

This is no light assertion derived from book lore, but the result of the practical experience of one who is in the habit of feasting right royally, in due season, upon the puff ball's delicate brain fritters, the hydnum's scalloped oysters, the brown, piquant, juicy steak of Fistulina hepatica (the liver fungus), the tender lamb kidneys of Agaricus deliciosus, and so on-delicacies all, and spread bounteously by the lavish hand of Nature for her neglectful children.

True enough, the ordinary mushroom is

eagerly snatched up, so that a dish is sometimes almost costly to buy; but though precept and example are not wanting, and other fungi of goodly qualities are pointed out, our poor will have none of them. At times, conversations similar to that heading this paper have occurred between the writer and some Essex or Hertfordshire labourer; but, at the bare suggestion of a trial of one of these strange meats, he will laugh you to scorn, when these are no poor makeshifts for hard times-no gastronomic paddings for days of famine, but excellent and delicious food.

But probably every new attempt at introducing food has been contemned. It has been said that he was a brave man who first tasted oysters; and it has, doubtless, required some little courage to experimentalise upon the various fruits and vegetables which, in the course of ages, have grown to be common among us.

The familiar argument is, that there is danger in eating fungi, for they are poisonous, noxious as the bright-eyed toad whose name they bear.

Well, it is a fact that there are some amongst them which are virulently poisonous, others again possessed of strange properties, such as will produce mania, and the semi stage of madness, intoxication. But can we not say the same of fruits and vegetables? Is not the family of the Solanum-from which we have the potato-famed for its life-destroying properties? Many such cases could be quoted were it needful. It is true that there are many fungi of a poisonous nature, but they cannot compete in numbers with those that are good for food, and come forth with the autumn rains for our service, but only to be shunned and despised.

The prejudice has fattened upon the food it meets with from time to time, when information is spread that some one has been poisoned almost unto death by mushrooms, although perhaps it turns out that not a single noxious specimen has been in the dish, only heedless of the strange nature of the plant-its fleshlike character, which can be seen by the way in which flies are attracted to the banquetthe mushrooms have been in a decomposing state a state which rapidly follows the gathering; and at such times they are most unwholesome-as poisonous as fish or meat in a similar condition.

But we do occasionally hear of poisonous fungi being gathered and eaten, even as children have before now died from the effects of some bright berries they have gathered by hedge or woodland side. The more reason then for the

spread of a little knowledge upon the subject— a knowledge easily learned, and well worthy of the little pains required. Not book knowledge; for it is folly to expect our labouring classes to study works upon the subject, but information that might be diffused by any intelligent man who would take the trouble to look into the matter. There is the prejudice to get over, certainly, but still that may be done in time; and surely when the peasantry of other lands can make a regular harvest of fungi—to eat fresh, to dry on strings in their cottages, and to pickle-our labourers might be taught to go and do likewise for their own benefit. It is hard, certainly, to bend the gnarled oak; but there are the saplings, and the young labouring hind who has once dipped his fingers in a well made purée of Agaricus prunulus, or Russula heterophylla would be like Charles Lamb's lubberly Chinese lad, Bobo, when he tasted the roast pig, ready to suck his digits again and again, and to teach his father how to do likewise.

There is so much in favour of the edible fungi: delicacy of flavour, nutritious properties, and abundance. But they must be gathered fresh, and well baked, fried, or stewed with the simple condiments pepper and salt; and then- But taste and try. As to the abundance, it is no exaggeration to assert, that during the height of the season, say from August to the end of October, a labourer's children could gather in wood and field a couple of good meals for a family of seven or eight in an hour: no trivial adjunct, where the head of the family is earning his nine or ten shillings per week.

But it may be said, toujours perdrix, &c. To which the writer replies, that in many of these homes it is frequently toujours pain, et rien de plus. There are fungi that grow commonly in our country places, and far more abundantly than the common mushroom—at least a dozen or twenty-easily distinguishable kinds, asking year by year to be gathered before they fall into decay, and asking in vain, though all the time they are food fit for an emperor.

There are the prejudice and ignorance to beat down; but it is surprising how good news will spread, and a little of the easily-acquired knowledge might readily be diffused by the teachers of the young. Reform will advance in all things, and the day may not be so far distant when it will be a common thing to see the poor, not less than the well-to-do, feasting upon what is now looked upon as strange food.

PARLIAMENTARY

3 how I have

Surprising

Once a Week, Sept. 5, 1868.]