"It was so," he said, and I saw a flush of light ripple over the emanation. I suppose it was a glow of self-satisfaction. "It came about thus. One of my wives had nearly let the fire out. I was very angry, and catching up one of the skins of milk, I banged her about the head with it till she fell insensible to the earth. The other wives were very pleased and applauded. When I came to take a drink, for my exertions had heated me, I found that the milk was curdled into butter. At first I did not know what it was, so I made one of my other wives taste it, and as she pronounced it to be good, I ate the rest myself. That was how butter was invented. For four hundred years that was the way it was made, by banging a milk-skin about the head of a woman till she was knocked down insensible. But at last a woman found out that by churning the milk with her hand butter could be made equally well, and then the former process was discontinued except by some men who clung to ancestral customs." "But," said I, "nowadays you would not be suffered to knock your wife about, even with a milk-skin." "Why not?" "Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol." "But she was my wife." "Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects women from ill-usage." "How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!" "Most assuredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with one of your wives. How many did you possess?" "Off and on, seventeen." "_Now_, no man is suffered to have more than one." "What--one at a time?" "Yes," I replied. "Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold, you could kill her and get another, young and pretty." "That would not be allowed." "Not even if she were a scold?" "No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end." "Humph!" H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently he said: "There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill one another." "No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off--here in France--unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead." "Then--what is your sport?" "We hunt the fox." "The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting is business with us--or was so--not sport." "Nevertheless with us it is our great sport." "Business is business and sport is sport," he said. "Now, we hunted as business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport." "We are not suffered to kill one another." "But take the case," said he, "that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?"