After that my thoughts leaped about the breakfast table with comparative nimbleness. I remembered that each morning there had been an egg, and that eggy puddings had appeared at the other meals. Before the war it was almost impossible to get eggs up here; clearly, then, I had chickens of my own. And the honey; I felt it would no longer surprise me to discover that I also had bees, for this honey was the real thing,--not your made-up stuff of the London shops. And strawberries; every morning a great cabbage leaf of strawberries had been on the table, real garden strawberries, over long ago down in the valley and never dreamed of as things worth growing by the peasants in the mountains. Obviously I counted these too among my possessions in some corner out of sight. The one object I couldn't proceed to by inductive reasoning from what was on the table was a pig. Antoine's courage had failed him over that. Too definitely must my repeated warning have echoed in his ears: _Surtout pas de porcs._ But how very intelligent he had been. It needs intelligence if one is conscientious to disobey orders at the right moment. And me so unaware all the time, and therefore so unworried! He passed along the terrace at that moment, a watering-pot in his hand. 'Antoine,' I said. 'Madame,' he said, stopping and taking off his cap. 'This egg--' I said, pointing to the shell. I said it in French, but prefer not to put my French on paper. '_Ah--madame a vu les poules_.' 'This butter--' '_Ah--madame a visité la vache._' 'The pig--?' I hesitated. 'Is there--is there also a pig?' '_Si madame veut descendre à la cave--_' 'You never keep a pig in the cellar?' I exclaimed. '_Comme jambon,_' said Antoine--calm, perfect of manner, without a trace of emotion. And there sure enough I was presently proudly shown by Mrs. Antoine, whose feelings are less invisible than her husband's, hanging from the cellar ceiling on hooks that which had once been pig. Several pigs; though she talked as if there had never been more than one. It may be so, of course, but if it is so it must have had a great many legs. _Un porc centipède_, I remarked thoughtfully, gazing upwards at the forest of hams. Over the thin ice of this comment she slid, however, in a voluble description of how, when the armistice was signed, she and Antoine had instantly fallen upon and slain the pig--pig still in the singular--expecting Madame's arrival after that felicitous event at any minute, and comprehending that _un porc vivant pourrait déranger madame, mais que mort il ne fait rien à personne que du plaisir._ And she too gazed upwards, but with affection and pride.