Since there are no iceboxes, unsalted meat must be eaten soon after being killed, although your feudal epicure is not squeamish. Beef and mutton are often killed, cut up, and cooked almost on the spot. There is a story of a butcher who, coming late to a town, got a lodging at the priest's house, and to pay for his quarters killed the sheep which they ate for supper. But pork is probably the commonest meat. Conon has great droves of hogs fattening out in his oak forests, which supply abundant crops of acorns. Pigs seem to penetrate almost everywhere save into messire's and madame's chamber. They are the general scavengers and apparently replace plumbing and sewerage systems. They infest castle courts and the streets of towns. In 1131 the Crown Prince of France was killed in Paris by a pig which ran between the legs of his horse as he rode from the Hotel de Ville to the Church of St. Gervais. People will tell you that pork promotes leprosy, but, nevertheless, they devour it. Pork, too, is the main substance of those great sausages and black puddings in which everybody delights, especially on Easter, when you break your Lenten fast with as much heavy food as possible. Veal, too, is desirable, as is the flesh of kids; but lamb is by no means so much in favor. Almost all kinds of birds are counted edible. Herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, and such fowl as can be taken by hawks are in preference, but crows are considered very fair eating. The flock of stately swans by the mouth of the Rapide has just been depleted, for these elegant birds are kept for the kitchen rather than for ornament. As for small fowl--thrushes, starlings, blackbirds, quail, partridges, and cuckoos--the varlets can bring in as many as possible with their crossbows and snares. Young rabbits, likewise, are welcome, but older rabbits are too tough save for the diet of the least-considered villeins. Everybody knows the saying, "An old hare and an old goose are food for the devil!" There is plenty of poultry around St. Aliquis. Most Christians hold that birds are of aquatic origin, hence, like fish, can be eaten on fast days, although the Church opposes this opinion, and is slowly overcoming it. Chickens have been fattened for the feast by shutting them up in dark coops and gorging them. Droves of geese have been coming in from the fields, great honking armies, crowding the narrow way, hissing and biting, but all propelled steadily ahead by the cracking whips of the small goosegirls. Ducks are more commonly preferred in their wild stage; but out in the exercise ground several peacocks have been preening themselves, and at least two of these are now sacrificed to make a gala dish to serve the highest seigneurs, for peacocks are counted especial "food for the brave." Indeed, there is the old proverb that "thieves have as much taste for falsehood as a hungry man for a cooked peacock."[29]