Babette’s whole 10,000 francs have been spent on the feast, but she does not mind that, because she is an artist and she has indulged her art; she has remembered her own nature, and introduced others to their real appetites. The pastor himself said, “The only things we can take from this earthly life are the things we have given away.”

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 353