The Adventures of Peregrine PickleSmollett, T. (Tobias)
General
The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle
Smollett, T. (Tobias)
Adventure stories; Fiction; Picaresque literature
The painter, who had by wry faces testified his abhorrence of the
sow's stomach, which he compared to a bagpipe, and the snails which had
undergone purgation, he no sooner heard him mention the roasted pullets,
than he eagerly solicited a wing of the fowl; upon which the doctor
desired he would take the trouble of cutting them up, and accordingly
sent them round, while Pallet tucked the table-cloth under his chin,
and brandished his knife and fork with singular address: but scarce were
they set down before him, when the tears ran down his cheeks; and he
called aloud, in a manifest disorder, “Zounds! this is the essence of a
whole bed of garlic!” That he might not, however, disappoint or disgrace
the entertainer, he applied his instruments to one of the birds; and
when he opened up the cavity, was assaulted by such an irruption of
intolerable smells, that, without staying to disengage himself from the
cloth, he sprang away, with an exclamation of “Lord Jesus!” and involved
the whole table in havoc, ruin, and confusion.
Before Pickle could accomplish his escape, he was sauced with the syrup
of the dormouse pie, which went to pieces in the general wreck; and as
for the Italian count, he was overwhelmed by the sow's stomach, which,
bursting in the fall, discharged its contents upon his leg and thigh,
and scalded him so miserably, that he shrieked with anguish, and grinned
with a most ghastly and horrible aspect.
The baron, who sat secure without the vortex of this tumult, was not at
all displeased at seeing his companions involved in such a calamity as
that which he had already shared; but the doctor was confounded with
shame and vexation. After having prescribed an application of oil to
the count's leg, he expressed his sorrow for the misadventure, which he
openly ascribed to want of taste and prudence in the painter, who did
not think proper to return, and make an apology in person; and protested
that there was nothing in the fowls which could give offence to a
sensible nose, the stuffing being a mixture of pepper, lovage, and
assafoetida, and the sauce consisting of wine and herring-pickle, which
he had used instead of the celebrated garum of the Romans; that famous
pickle having been prepared sometimes of the scombri, which were a
sort of tunny-fish, and sometimes of the silurus, or shad-fish: nay, he
observed that there was a third kind, called garum haemation, made of
the guts, gills, and blood of the thynnus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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