'Ah—madame a visité la vache.'
'The pig—?' I hesitated. 'Is there—is there also a pig?'
'Si madame veut descendre à la cave—'
'You never keep a pig in the cellar?' I exclaimed.
'Comme jambon,' said Antoine—calm, perfect of manner, without a trace of emotion.
And there sure enough I was presently proudly shown by Mrs. Antoine, whose feelings are less invisible than her husband's, hanging from the cellar ceiling on hooks that which had once been pig. Several pigs; though she talked as if there had never been more than one. It may be so, of course, but if it is so it must have had a great many legs.
Un porc centipède, I remarked thoughtfully, gazing upwards at the forest of hams.
Over the thin ice of this comment she slid, however, in a voluble description of how, when the armistice was signed, she and Antoine had instantly fallen upon and slain the pig—pig still in the singular—expecting Madame's arrival after that felicitous event at any minute, and comprehending that un porc vivant pourrait déranger madame, mais que mort il ne fait rien à personne que du plaisir. And she too gazed upwards, but with affection and pride.
There remained then nothing to do but round off these various transactions by a graceful and grateful paying for them. Which I did to-day, Antoine presenting the bills, accompanied by complicated calculations and deductions of the market price of the milk and butter and eggs he and Mrs. Antoine would otherwise have consumed during the past years.
I didn't look too closely into what the pig had cost,—his price, as my eye skimmed over it was obviously the price of something plural. But my eye only skimmed. It didn't dwell. Always Antoine and I have behaved to each other like gentlemen.