Show there was given in paris a great feast to the mayors ot prance some of the french newspaper men declared unthinkingly perhaps that in the point ot the numbers fed and in the sumptuousness of the banquet it was the greatest affair of the kind ever given in the world it the paris correspondents are frenchmen they are to be forgiven perhaps for leaving out of their calculation another parisian feast given nearly five hundred years ago at that banquet people were fed lne was not served from bottles but the revelers filled their flagens flagons and cupa from fountains which ran the product of champagne and burgundy throughout the livelong day it was the english king henry V who gave this feast and it was in celebration of his conquest of france and of his being declared king regent of that country of a truth the parisians Pari may be forgiven it their minds revert not to that former festival As a matter ot fact there are in gastronomic history scores of dinners that outdid in the number ot diners and in the elegance of appointment the one which the government of france gave to the majors of the country s municipalities the story of the banquet which gave to nero ns it appears in quo vadas has foundation in tact that feast was held on a raft made of gilded timbers the structure being moored to the shore by means of golden ropes the whole earth contributed of its birds mam mals fish and plants to the spreading forth of the table the entire revenue of a roman province tor a icar went to the cost the canopy which was spread over the heads ot the diners was of syrian purple while the glassware was the plunder of italy greece and asia minor the cost of the french mayors banquet putting it at sinks into the pit of insignificance compiled comp ired with the amount of money which a single map careus gabalus spent on his appetite this homan epicure of the early empire period paid 4 er abe gratification ot his palate when he had spent all of his barring a trifle of he poisoned himself in order that be might avoid the misery of being forced ta ya on a plain diet one needs to go no farther than to england to find a feast at which more people were fed than partook of the french government s hospitality bea henry ills daughter margaret married alexander HI of scotland people partook ot the royal hospitality at one bitting A curious feature of this banquet was the serving to the assembled multitude of whales and porpoises sea mammals which the english of that day regarded as the chief of delicacies that their taste may not have been of the refined may be guessed perhaps from the tact that on the same day they au gluttonously cranes herons and hawks birds that would turn the stomach of the bon vivant of today the scotch and english on that occasion in addition to other edibles disposed of oxen specially fattened for the feast the french people may find an instance in their own history of a dinner given by the government in the person of the king which tor novelty and cost far surpassed the gathering at the board of the mayors near the end of the fourteenth century charles V of france wanted to do something nice for the emperor of germany so he invited hm to dinner promising him as an inducement to come something which he had never seen before the emperor came and guests to the number of many hundreds were seated about the board in a great open pavilion whan the banquet had reached the point between elsh and fowl a shadow fell athwart the table and looking up the astounded banque beheld a full rigged ship with sails all set bearing down upon them it waft impelled across the land by unseen and noiseless machinery at the edge of the pavilion the vessel cast anchor on KB deck waa been a knight representing godfrey de bouillon surrounded by acores of men at arms no sooner had the anchor been dropped than there appeared at about one hundred yards distance the city of jerusalem with its walls and turrets manned by saracena saracens Sara cens the knights led by god trey left the vessel pitched a camp and then attacked the city the sara cens defended its walls vigorously and so realistic was the fight that a large number of the besieged and besiegers were injured when the affair was over charida V and his german guest went back to their hotel the stories of the arabian nights feasts are glittering it Is an easy matter to pick out three or tour which would surpass the french affair but the trouble Is the stories are fiction pure and simple there Is however one absolutely authentic account of an oriental feast beside which all the other banquets of history are but as candles to the sun the caliph el ma moon was to be married to the daughter of a rich dignitary the prospective son in law wished to do things in proper style so he asked everybody rich and poor alike within miles of his residence to attend the marriage feast the historical accounts of the affair say that ten great palaces with all their rooms could not have given standing room to the multitudes that came when the people had assembled the poor as it by instinct herded together while the rich kept by themselves in order that the common people might not become impatient while waiting for their dinner the caliph and his bride stood upon a great platform and directed the movements of a score of servants whose labor it was to shower the poorer guests with gold coin the coin storm was succeeded by one of small bags of ambergris aa valuable as the glittering gold which it followed then aa a further diversion balls of musk were thrown among tha people who scrambled and struggled mightily for their possession inside each musk ball was a ticket which entitled the lucky holder to enough land slaves ancl horses to make him independently rich the bests all sat down to dinner together and were served by an army of attendants it they had been at one long table the man who sat at the head could not have seen tae man who faced him at the toot one of the features ot this dinner was a candle of ambergris weighing 80 pounds this candle worth a fortune in itself was kept alight for days by the eastern potentate who literally had money to burn the candle waa in a gold candlestick weighing nana pounds the bride sat at meat with the guests and as she took her place at the table her grandmother approached and emptied a bucket of pearls over her head P in law went broke over this banquet and la that ta ha might himself the caliph him satrap of one of the e ces inasmuch aa the holding of this office carried with it the privilege H of raising or lowering taxes at will it may be imagined that the feast giver was not long in getting even the earl of warwick the king maker if he could have been consulted through a proper spiritualistic medium would have been able to give the parisians Pari some sound advice on how to teed a multitude there sat down dally as the guests and retainers of the earl of warwick during the height of his power not lesa than 30 persons the earl wag a good entertainer and some of the banquets which he gave have lived in history but more because of their size than because of their sumptuousness lie was a believer in beet and ale rather than in ph asanta and champagne the king maker lived some tour centuries or more ago but may it not be said with some truth today that the different ideas that then existed in england and france as to the proper food exist in a large measure today and find some reflex in the characters of two great peoples |