into his bacon, he invariably took to his heels before
Brigitte was half way to the door to answer it.

If, as usual, the peal announced a diner-out, Brigitte and Gold-button
were soon on his track, calling him by the most tender epithets, and
promising that he should have something nice for his supper, skim-milk,
&c.; but the pig, with his painful experience, was not such a fool as to
believe them; hidden behind an old cask, some faggots, or lying in a
deep ditch, he remained silent as the grave, and kept himself close as
long as possible.

Discovered, however, he was sure to be at last, when he would rush into
the garden, and running up and down it like a mad creature, upset
everything in his way; for several minutes it was a regular
steeple-chase--across the beds, now over the turnips, then through the
gooseberry-bushes; in short, he was here, there, and everywhere; but in
spite of all his various stratagems to escape the fatal incision, the
poor pig always finished by being seized, tied, thrown on the ground,
and bled: the vein was then once more cleverly sewn up, and the inhuman
operators quietly retired from the scene to make the _cure's_ far-famed
black-pudding. Half dead upon the spot where he was phlebotomized, the
wretched animal was left to reflect under the shade of a tulip-tree on
the cruelty of man, on their barbarous appetites; cursing with all his
heart the poverty of Morvinian curates, their conceited hospitality, of
which he was the victim, and their brutal affection for pig's blood.

I shall now endeavour to give the reader a description of the curate of
the plain; but he should clearly understand that I do not present this
character to him as the general standard of ecclesiastical
excellence,--quite the contrary; I am sorry to say I think it an
exception. My sketch, therefore, applies only to those _cures_, who
reside in a remote rural district like that of Le Morvan; I advance
nothing that I have not seen myself, and if I should ever have the
pleasure of meeting any of my English friends in Le Morvan, I could
introduce them to ten _cures_ one and all similar in every respect to
the ecclesiastic I am about to pourtray.

In the interior of this district, that is to say in the midst of her
rich plains, and in the hilly but not mountainous parts of it, the
_cures_ are quite of another stamp; less poor than the herbivorous
gentleman we have just described, but not so well to do as those of
Burgundy;