ome cloaks for seven or eight stout-built generals. Away they
both went, arm-in-arm, and then holding up their skirts a great deal
higher than was necessary, told the gods what they two had been doing
for them and their glory. About the court of the temple the sacred
swine were lying in indolent composure: seeing which, the brotherly
twain began to commune with themselves afresh: and the senior said
repentantly, "What fools we have been! The populace will laugh
outright at the curtailment of our vestures, but would gladly have
seen these animals eat daily a quarter less of the lentils." The words
were spoken so earnestly and emphatically that they were overheard by
the quadrupeds. Suddenly there was a rising of all the principal ones
in the sacred enclosure: and many that were in the streets took up,
each according to his temperament and condition, the gravest or
shrillest tone of reprobation. The thinner and therefore the more
desperate of the creatures, pushing their snouts under the curtailed
habiliments of the high priests, assailed them with ridicule and
reproach. For it had pleased the gods to work a miracle in their
behoof, and they became as loquacious as those who governed them, and
who were appointed to speak in the high places. "Let the worst come to
the worst, we at least have our tails to our hams," said they. "For
how long?" whined others, piteously: others incessantly ejaculated
tremendous imprecations: others, more serious and sedate, groaned
inwardly; and, although under their hearts there lay a huge mass of
indigestible sourness ready to rise up against the chief priests, they
ventured no farther than expostulation. "We shall lose our voices,"
said they, "if we lose our complement of lentils; and then, most
reverend lords, what will ye do for choristers?" Finally, one of grand
dimensions, who seemed almost half-human, imposed silence on every
debater. He lay stretched out apart from his brethren, covering with
his side the greater portion of a noble dunghill, and all its verdure
native and imported. He crushed a few measures of peascods to cool his
tusks; then turned his pleasurable longitudinal eyes far toward the
outer extremities of their sockets, and leered fixedly and
sarcastically at the high priests, showing every tooth in each jaw.
Other men might have feared them; the high priests envied them, seeing
what order they were in, and what exploits they were capable of. A
great painter, who flourishe