_Peabody._ Why not? With Knights Companions of Oilcake, Mangold-Wurzel, Buckwheat, and Barleymeal? I don’t see why a very pretty sort of heraldry might not be got up of prize cattle; much wiser and more serviceable, after all, to mankind, than the prize Unicorns and prize Griffins won upon battle-fields. Then, as for the shedding of blood, I don’t think that’s the best sort that grows us laurels; but that _that_ runs to black puddings. _Nutts._ Well, of the two, I know which does the least mischief, and gives the wholesomest bellyful. And as there’s a good many of the aristocracy--by-the-by, you can’t think what a while I was mustering that word, but I’ve got hold of him at last--as the aristocracy go in every year for a show of fat, I shouldn’t wonder to see the day come when medals for killing men, and, as Mr Tickle says, for swindling ’em in cabinets, haven’t all the shine taken out of ’em by the medals of cattle-shows. _Peabody._ Very true, Mr Nutts. Put a case now. There is M. Bresson: I believe he has had bestowed upon him the Order of the Golden Fleece. _Nosebag._ What was the beginnin’ of that Order? _Peabody._ To reward the flaying of a whole people! Well, Mons. Bresson has the Fleece because he kidnapped that little girl--the Infanta--as a daughter-in-law for Louis Philippe. Poor little Merino Lamb! the Fleece had a meaning in it, as payment for such work. Nevertheless, when the Frenchman walks with it about his neck--as though he carried a star out of heaven under his chin--do you think, all matters considered, the Order is as honest a looking thing--as honourable to him who carries it, and as serviceable to the world, as the gold medal given to--here it is (_reads_)--to “Mr J. Painter of Burley, near Oakham, Rutland” for “a pen of three twenty-one-months-old new Leicester wethers”? Tell me that, Mr Slowgoe. _Tickle._ I should think not: that’s something like Fleece, that is; and the wethers were fed upon good honest corn, and meal, and pulse, I’ll be bound--while for the poor little Spanish girl, I wonder what sort of promise the Frenchman crammed her with, that made her a Prize Bride, and so rewarded him with the Prize Order. _Nosebag._ But after all--though I’ve stuck the bills, as I may say, taken money of the cattle--after all, it does seem to me a flying in the face of plenty, to fatten ’em, not for the food of Christians, but for soap and candles. I’m sartin on it--for I walked round and looked at all on ’em--there was half-a-dozen oxen there that was so fat they seemed quite disconcerned o’ themselves. And the poor creturs seemed to look at some o’ their owners as much as to say, “We wonder you ain’t ashamed o’ yourselves to spile our figures in this fashion; to pad us--and all in the wrong places--with tallowy fat; and to take all the shape and make out of us innocent unsuspecting oxen, as if we was nothin’ more than churchwardens or city aldermen.”