THE HEDGEHOG : BLACKGUARD OF THE PRESS. 185 
aspect, accommodating himself to every thing — to fruits and 
vegetables, as to snails and small game. Gluttonous and repul- 
sive, it is also the portrait of the scurvy slave of the pen, traffick- 
ing with all subjects, selling post-master’s appointments and thea- 
tre franks — even promises of ministerial smiles — and drawing 
without remorse from his sorry Christian conscience, pledges and 
apologies at fixed prices for all the scoundrels, offering incense to 
the Metternichs, and deriding the pleaders of the people. 
Nature has gifted the hedgehog with a groin like the swine’s, 
in allusion to his cupidity and the grossness of his appetites, hut 
there the comparison ceases. Thus we shall see farther on at the 
article Wild Boar, the hog is the emblem of useful avarice : all 
of him is good after he is dead. The hedgehog on the contrary 
is of no more use after death than during his life. What re- 
mains after death of the literary scoundrel attached to the com- 
pilation of a venal newspaper ? Nothing but the fugitive remem- 
brance of the affronts he has submitted to, of the contempt he 
has inspired. I know that a contraiy opinion has found credit in 
the country, where the flesh of the hedgehog has passed for being 
eatable. I can only deplore sincerely this gastrosophic error, 
which I comprehend and excuse from the misery of the civilizees 
and the universal deterioration of taste. The error has had no 
great success, and the dog has from the first protested against 
hedgehog stews in very warm terms. 
There is a natural antipathy between the dog and the hedge- 
hog ; the firsts emblem of devotion and of courage, enemy of 
fraudulence ; the other, emblem of cupidity and of cowardice. 
The dog becomes infuriated at the sight of the filthy animal, 
and rushes on him with violence ; but as he is afraid of sticking 
his nose, he soon renounces the attack and passes on, limiting 
himself to the expression of his disgust in making his adieus. 
Thus the legislator well-informed, but afraid of sticking his 
fingers in the reform of the abuses of the venal press, contents 
himself with sound curses on the infamy of the literary black- 
guard taken in the act of robbery and perjury ; so that this mis- 
erable industry ends by forming for itself, out of the universal 
disgust, a sort of impenetrable cuirass and privilege of impu- 
