"What would you have me say?" said the poet. "I do not know what to say, I do not know which sonnet I prefer; I have taken horrible pains with all of them.... But you, which do you prefer?" "My dear master, how can I choose out of so many jewels, when each one is perfect in its beauty? You flash pearls, emeralds, and rubies before my astonished eyes: how should I decide to prefer the emerald to the pearl? I am transported by admiration of the whole necklace." "Well, as for me, there is something I am more proud of than of all my sonnets, and which has done much more for my reputation than my verses." I opened my eyes wide, "What is that?" I asked. The master looked at me mischievously; then, with that beautiful light in his eyes which fires his youthful countenance, he said triumphantly-- "It is my discovery of the etymology of the word haricot!" I was so amazed that I forgot to laugh. "I am perfectly serious in telling you this." "I know, my dear master, of your reputation for profound scholarship: but to imagine, on that account, that you were famed for your discovery of the etymology of haricot--I should never have expected it! Will you tell me how you made the discovery?" "Willingly. See now: I found some information respecting the haricot while studying that fine seventeenth-century work of natural history by Hernandez: _De Historia plantarum novi orbis_. The word haricot was unknown in France until the seventeenth century: people used the word _feve_ or _phaseol_: in Mexican, _ayacot_. Thirty species of haricot were cultivated in Mexico before the conquest. They are still known as _ayacot_, especially the red haricot, spotted with black or violet. One day at the house of Gaston Paris I met a famous scholar. Hearing my name, he rushed at me and asked if it was I who had discovered the etymology of the word haricot. He was absolutely ignorant of the fact that I had written verses and published the _Trophees_."-- A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous sonnets as second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn was delighted with his _ayacot_. How right I was to suspect the outlandish word of American Indian origin! How right the insect was, in testifying, in its own fashion, that the precious bean came to us from the New World! While still retaining its original name--or something sufficiently like it--the bean of Montezuma, the Aztec _ayacot_, has migrated from Mexico to the kitchen-gardens of Europe.