Erica Eisdorfer, The Wet Nurse's Tale, 2009 If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.
They are all most sumptuously furnished, whilst the gardens surrounding them are laid out with exquisite taste.
But to me this bitter, prickly Thistle is more savory and relishing than the most exquisite and sumptuous banquet.
" When the old woman heard of the exquisite salad, she was greedy, and said, "Dear countryman, let me just try this wonderful salad.
Then he went onwards, and in the evening, when hunger once more returned to him, he wanted to make a trial of his little cloth, and spread it out and said, I wish you to be covered with good cheer again, and scarcely had the wish crossed his lips than as many dishes with the most exquisite food on them stood on the table as there was room for.
And scarcely had the carpenter said, table, spread yourself, than it was spread and amply covered with the most exquisite dishes.
"We are afraid that the gardener will come to think too much of himself," said they; but he looked on it in another way: what he wished was to get the reputation of being one of the best gardeners in the country, and to produce every year something exquisite out of all sorts of garden stuff, and that he did.
Many presents arrived, and among them came a saddle of exquisite workmanship, a comfortable and costly saddle—one of the Princes had just such another.
It was exquisite, silk, handmade and trimmed with a cobweb of lace.
A marble bridge, of such exquisite workmanship that it appeared as if formed of lace and pearls, led to the island of happiness, in which bloomed the garden of paradise.
Both swindlers requested him to come near, and asked him if he did not admire the exquisite pattern and the beautiful colours, pointing to the empty looms.
