manner of eggs, for fast-days, and other days, in more than sixty
fashions. Amsterdam, Louys, and Daniel Elsevier. 1665." The mark
is not the old "Sage," but the "Minerva" with her owl. Now this
book has no intrinsic value any more than a Tauchnitz reprint of any
modern volume on cooking. The 'Pastissier' is cherished because it
is so very rare. The tract passed into the hands of cooks, and the
hands of cooks are detrimental to literature. Just as nursery
books, fairy tales, and the like are destroyed from generation to
generation, so it happens with books used in the kitchen. The
'Pastissier,' to be sure, has a good frontispiece, a scene in a Low
Country kitchen, among the dead game and the dainties. The buxom
cook is making a game pie; a pheasant pie, decorated with the bird's
head and tail-feathers, is already made. {1}

Not for these charms, but for its rarity, is the 'Pastissier'
coveted. In an early edition of the 'Manuel' (1821) Brunet says,
with a feigned brutality (for he dearly loved an Elzevir), "Till now
I have disdained to admit this book into my work, but I have yielded
to the prayers of amateurs. Besides, how could I keep out a volume
which was sold for one hundred and one francs in 1819?" One hundred
and one francs! If I could only get a 'Pastissier' for one hundred
and one francs! But our grandfathers lived in the Bookman's
Paradise. "Il n'est pas jusqu'aux Anglais," adds Brunet--"the very
English themselves--have a taste for the 'Pastissier.'" The Duke of
Marlborough's copy was actually sold for 1 pound 4s. It would have
been money in the ducal pockets of the house of Marlborough to have
kept this volume till the general sale of all their portable
property at which our generation is privileged to assist. No wonder
the 'Pastissier' was thought rare. Berard only knew two copies.
Pietiers, writing on the Elzevirs in 1843, could cite only five