Episode 227

At Paris, in the roastmeat cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the cookshop of one of the roastmeat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry porter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above the reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and found it, so besmoked with the vapour, to be savoury; which the cook observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf, whereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about decamping and going away. But, by your leave, as the fellow thought to have departed thence shot-free, the master-cook laid hold upon him by the gorget, and demanded payment for the smoke of his roast meat. The porter answered, that he had sustained no loss at all; that by what he had done there was no diminution made of the flesh; that he had taken nothing of his, and that therefore he was not indebted to him in anything. As for the smoke in question, that, although he had not been there, it would howsoever have been evaporated;besides, that before that time it had never been seen nor heard that roastmeat smoke was sold upon the streets of Paris. The cook hereto replied, that he was not obliged nor any way bound to feed and nourish for nought a porter whom he had never seen before with the smoke of his roast meat, and thereupon swore that if he would not forthwith content and satisfy him with present payment for the repast which he had thereby got, that he would take his crooked staves from off his back; which, instead of having loads thereafter laid upon them, should serve for fuel to his kitchen fires. Whilst he was going about so to do, and to have pulled them to him by one of the bottom rungs which he had caught in his hand, the sturdy porter got out of his grip, drew forth the knotty cudgel, and stood to his own defence. The altercation waxed hot in words, which moved the gaping hoidens of the sottish Parisians to run from all parts thereabouts, to see what the issue would be of that b…