CHAPTER XIX 



AN INVADER. — THE HARICOT-WEEVIL 



If there is one vegetable on earth that more than any 

 other is a gift of the gods, it is the haricot bean. It has 

 all the virtues : it forms a soft paste upon the tongue ; 

 it is extremely palatable, abundant, inexpensive, and 

 highly nutritious. It is a vegetable meat which, without 

 being bloody and repulsive, is the equivalent of the 

 horrors outspread upon the butcher's slab. To recall its 

 services the more emphatically, the Proven9al idiom calls 

 it the gounflO'gus — the filler of the poor. 



Blessed Bean, consoler of the wretched, right well 

 indeed do you fill the labourer, the honest, skilful 

 worker who has drawn a low number in the crazy 

 lottery of life. Kindly Haricot, with three drops of oil 

 and a dash of vinegar you were the favourite dish of 

 my young years ; and even now, in the evening of my 

 days, you are welcome to my humble porringer. We 

 shall be friends to the last. 



To-day it is not my intention to sing your merits ; I 

 wish simply to ask you a question, being curious : What 

 is the country of your origin ? Did you come from 

 Central Asia with the broad bean and the pea ? Did you 

 make part of that collection of seeds which the first 



