The Life of the Weevil 



The haricot has a reputation of another 

 kind, a reputation more flatulent than flatter- 

 ing. You eat it and then, as the saying goes, 

 the sooner you are off the better. It there- 

 fore lends itself to the coarse jests loved by 

 the rabble, especially when these are put into 

 words by the shameless genius of an 

 Aristophanes or a Plautus. What stage 

 effects could have been produced by the 

 merest allusion to the noisy bean, raising 

 guffaws of laughter from the mariners of 

 Athens or the street-porters of Rome! Did 

 the two comic poets, in the unfettered gaiety 

 of a language less reserved than ours, ever 

 refer to the virtues of the haricot? Not 

 once. They are quite silent on the subject 

 of the sonorous bean. 



The word haricot itself sets us thinking. 

 It is an outlandish term, related to none of 

 our expressions. Its turn of language, which 

 is alien to our combinations of sounds, 

 suggests to the mind some West-Indian 

 jargon, as do caoutchouc and cocoa. Does 

 the word, as a matter of fact, come from the 

 American Redskins? Did we receive, to- 

 gether with the bean, the name by which it is 

 called in its native country? Perhaps so; 

 272 



