The mixture is the equivalent of the aioli dear to the Provençal palate. It sounds very well in verse, but it lacks substance. On such an occasion men would prefer such solid fare as a dish of red haricots seasoned with chopped onions. Capital: that ballasts the stomach, while remaining just as countrified as garlic. Thus filled, in the open air, to the chirping of the Cicadæ, the gang of harvesters could take a brief mid-day nap and gently digest their meal in the shade of the sheaves. Our modern Thestyles, differing so little from their classic sisters, would take good care not to forget the gounflo-gus, that thrifty stand-by of big appetites. The Thestylis of the poet does not think of it, because she does not know it. The same author shows us Tityrus offering a night’s hospitality to his friend Melibœus, who, driven from his property by the soldiers of Octavius, goes off limping behind his flock of goats. ‘We shall have chestnuts,’ says Tityrus, ‘cheese and fruits.’ History does not say if Melibœus allowed himself to be tempted. It is a pity, for during the frugal meal we might have learnt, in a more explicit fashion, that the shepherds of olden time had to do without the haricot. Ovid tells us, in a delightful passage, of the manner in which Philemon and Baucis welcomed the gods unawares as guests in their humble cottage. On the three-legged table steadied by means of a potsherd, they served cabbage-soup, rancid bacon, eggs turned for a moment over the hot cinders, cornelian cherries preserved in brine, honey and fruits. One dish is lacking amid this rustic magnificence, an essential dish which no Baucis of our country-side would ever forget. The bacon-soup would have been followed, inevitably, by a plateful of haricots. Why does Ovid, the poet so rich in details, fail to speak of the bean which would have looked so well on the bill of fare? The reply is the same: he cannot have known of it. In vain do I go over the little that my reading has taught me of rustic food in ancient times: I have no recollection of the haricot. The stew-pots of the vine-dresser and the harvester tell me of the lupin, the broad bean, the pea, and the lentil; but they never mention the bean of beans. The haricot has a reputation of another kind, a reputation more flatulent than flattering. You eat it and then, as the saying goes, the sooner you are off the better. It therefore lends itself to the coarse jests loved by the rabble, especially when these are put into words by the shameless genius of an Aristophanes or a Plautus. What stage effects could have been produced by the merest allusion to the noisy bean, raising guffaws of laughter from the mariners of Athens or the street-porters of Rome! Did the two comic poets, in the unfettered gaiety of a language less reserved than ours, ever refer to the virtues of the haricot? Not once. They are quite silent on the subject of the sonorous bean.