Lent has been a trying time for good society in Paris, or rather for so much of it as is really good. People must dine, and yet one cannot, without risk of doing wrong, eat what one would like. It is really very hard to know, in Paris, what one may take with a good conscience. Some bishops, for instance, treat wild duck as "gras" and forbid it; others admit it as maigre," and how is a host to know the views of every diocese in France? Teal is a safe card to play. but other game smacks of heterodoxy. Nevertheless, in some houges it has been found possible to arrange with heaven, as the French say. A boned teal with a fish stuffing, (in which tho exciting "écrevisse" plays a prominent part) is permissible, and there is some good: after all in a scheme of things which provides beautiful plump white sticks of Argenteuil asparagus just when they are most needed. And white hands, delicately maneurring the asparagus clip and whisking through the ambered reflections of a silver-gilt finger-bowl, are some consolation to the Parisian for his abstinence, if he looks at Lent in a proper light.
22nd March.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.