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 _curé'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 _curés_, 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 _curés_ 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 _curés_ 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; living under a state of things altogether peculiar to themselves, far from the great cities, and yet in direct communication with them, they are obliged by a common interest to identify themselves with the events of the day. Every curate of the plain possesses an immense influence in his parish and neighbourhood, and as at a moment their support may be of great use in a political point of view, the government, which is alive to everything, caresses, smiles on, and cajoles them.