The tables groaned beneath mountains of good things, and
in the centre of each, like Mont Blanc rising from the lower Alps,
stood a magnificent Easter pie, the confection of which was a
masterpiece of the skill of Maitre Guillot Gobet, the head cook of
the Bourgeois, who was rather put out, however, when Dame Rochelle
decided to bestow all the Easter pies upon the hungry voyageurs,
woodmen, and workmen, and banished them from the menu of the more
patrician tables set for the guests of the mansion.
"Yet, after all," exclaimed Maitre Guillot, as he thrust his head
out of the kitchen door to listen to the song the gay fellows were
singing with all their lungs in honor of his Easter pie; "after all,
the fine gentlemen and ladies would not have paid my noble pies such
honor as that! and what is more the pies would not have been eaten
up to the last crumb!" Maitre Guillot's face beamed like a harvest
moon, as he chimed in with the well-known ditty in praise of the
great pie of Rouen:
"'C'est dans la ville de Rouen,
Ils ont fait un pate si grand,
Ils ont fait un pate si grand,
Qu'ils ont trouve un homme dedans!'"
Maitre Guillot would fain have been nearer, to share in the shouting
and clapping of hands which followed the saying of grace by the good
Cure of St.
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