Other side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals.

For the fish course he ate a dish of snakes in boiling tar and pitch.

His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone.

The salad proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars.

He washed all this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all.