THE PIG
I shall paint here the pig’s portrait. He is a solid beast, made all in one piece, without joints and without a neck; and he sinks in front like a sack, jolting along on four squat hams. He is a trumpet on the march, ever seeking; and to every odor that he scents he applies his pump-like body. He sucks it in. When he has found the necessary hole, he wallows enormously. This is not the wriggling of a duck who enters the water. It is not the sociable happiness of the dog. It is a deep, solitary, conscientious, integral enjoyment. He sniffs, he sips, he tastes, and you cannot say whether he eats or drinks. Perfectly round, with a little quiver, he advances and buries himself in the unctuous center of the fresh filth. He grunts, he sports in the recesses of his tripery. He winks an eye. Consummate amateur, although his ever-active smelling apparatus lets nothing escape, his tastes do not run to the transient perfumes of flowers or of frivolous fruits. In everything he searches for nourishment. He loves it rich and strong and ripe, and hisinstinct attaches him to these two fundamental things, earth and ordure.
Glutton, wanton, though I present you with this model, admit this—that something is lacking to your satisfaction. The body is not sufficient to itself; but the doctrine that you teach us is not in vain. “Do not apply the eye alone to truth, but all that is thyself, without reserve.” Happiness is our duty and our inheritance, a certain perfect possession is intended.
But like the sow which furnished the oracles to Æneas, the meeting with one always seems to me an augury, a social symbol. Her flank is more vague than hills seen through the rain, and when she litters, giving drink to a battalion of young boars who march between her legs, she seems to me the very image of those mountains which suckle the clusters of villages attached to their torrents, no less massive and no less misshapen.
I must not omit to say that the blood of the pig serves to fix gold.