CHAPTER XIII 



THE HARICOT-WEEVIL 



TF there is a Heaven-sent vegetable on 

 earth, it is the haricot bean. It has every 

 good quality in its favour: it is soft to the 

 tooth, of an agreeable flavour, plentiful, 

 cheap and very nutritious. It is a vegetable 

 flesh which, without being repulsive or drip- 

 ping with blood, is as good as the cut-up 

 horrors in the butcher's shop. To em- 

 phasize its services to mankind, the Pro- 

 vengal idiom calls it gounflo-gus, the poor 

 man's bellows. 1 



Blessed bean, consoler of the poor, yes, 

 you easily fill out the labourer, the honest and 

 capable worker who has drawn the wrong 

 number in life's mad lottery; kindly bean, 

 with three drops of oil and a dash of vinegar, 

 you were the favourite dish of my boyhood; 

 and even now, in the evening of my days, 



iQr, if the reader prefers, the Swell-belly. Gus, in 

 the Provencal dialect, means both "guts" and "bigger." 

 ^Translator's Note. 



265 



