sent for. The next moment they led forward six goats harnessed to a pumpkin of such a prodigious size that two persons could sit in it with the greatest ease. The pumpkin was dry, and the inside hollowed out and fitted with capital down cushions, and lined with velvet throughout. The Princess got into it, admiring so novel an equipage. The Master-Ram seated himself in the pumpkin beside her, and the goats took them at full gallop to a cavern, the entrance to which was closed by a large stone. The golden-horned Ram touched the stone with his foot, and it immediately fell. He told the Princess to enter without fear: she believed the cavern to be a horrible place, and had her alarm been less, nothing could have induced her to descend into it; but her apprehensions of pursuit were so great, that she would at that moment have thrown herself into a well.
She followed therefore without hesitation the Ram, who walked before her to show her the way down, which ran so deep, so deep, that she fancied she must be going at least to the antipodes, and sometimes feared he was conducting her to the regions of the dead.
At length she discovered all on a sudden a vast plain, enamelled with a thousand different flowers, whose delicious perfume surpassed that of any she had ever met with; a broad river of orange-flower water flowed around it; fountains of Spanish wine, rossolis,[1] hipocras, and a thousand other sorts of liqueurs formed charming cascades and little rivulets. The plain was covered with singular trees. There were entire avenues of them, with partridges better larded and dressed than you would get them at La Guerbois'[2] hanging on the branches. In other avenues they were laden with quails, young rabbits, turkeys, chickens, pheasants, and ortolans. In certain parts, where the atmosphere appeared a little hazy, it rained Bisques d'écrevisse, and other soups; foies-gras, ragouts of sweetbreads, white puddings, sausages, tarts, patties, sweet-meats both wet and dry; besides Louis-d'ors, crowns, pearls,
- ↑ See note to page 2. Hipocras was an artificial wine, usually made of claret and spices.
- ↑ The name of a famous traiteur, or rôtisseur, to be added to those of Mignot and Bergerat, immortalised by Boileau. "There is a cook-shop in the Rue St. Honoré," writes an English traveller of that period, "where 300 men are employed in larding of fowl all at a time. The master keeps a register of the places where they live, and of the times when they are to bring in fowl larded. He told me he sometimes dressed dinners of a thousand livres (francs)."—View of Paris, 1701.
