"The word Behemoth is a plural form in Hebrew meaning Excellence. It designates a prodigious and enormous beast—the rhinoceros, perhaps, or the hippopotamus. As to Leviathan, it was a huge reptile, a gigantic python."
"That is a pity," said Durtal. "Imaginary zoology was far more amusing!—Why, what is this vegetable?" he inquired, as he tasted a curious stew of greens.
"Dandelions cut up and boiled with shreds of bacon," replied Madame Bavoil. "Do you like the dish, our friend?"
"Indeed I do. Your dandelions are to garden spinach and chicory what the wild duck is to the tame, or the hare to the rabbit. And it is a fact that garden plants are generally poor and tasteless, while those that grow wild have a certain astringency and pleasant bitter flavour. It is the venison of vegetables that you have given us, Madame Bavoil!"
"I fancy," said the Abbé Plomb, who had been thoughtful, "that just as we tried to compile a mystic flora the other day, we might make a list of the deadly sins as represented by animals."
"Obviously, and with very little trouble. Pride is embodied in the bull, the peacock, the lion, the eagle, the horse, the swan, and the wild ass—according to Vincent de Beauvais. Avarice by the wolf, and, says Saint Theobald, by the spider; for lust, we have the he-goat, the boar, the toad, the ass, and the fly, which, Saint Gregory the Great tells, typifies the turbulent cravings of the senses; for envy, the sparrow-hawk, the owl, and screech-owl; for greediness, the hog and the dog; for anger, the lion and wild boar, and, according to Adamantius, the leopard; for sloth, the vulture, the snail, the she-ass, and, Raban Maur says, the mule.
"As to the virtues antithetical to these vices, humility may be typified by the ox and the ass; indifference to worldly possessions by the pelican, the emblem of the contemplative life; chastity by the dove and the elephant, though it is true that this interpretation of Peter of Capua
is contradicted by other mystics, who accuse the elephant of pride, and speak of him as an 'enormous sinner'; charity by the lark and the pelican; temperance by the camel, which, taken in another sense, typifies under the name of gamal extravagant fury; vigilance by the lion, the peacock, the ant—quoted by the Abbess Herrade and the Anonymous monk of Clairvaux—and especially by the cock, to which Saint Eucher attributes this virtue in common with all other symbolists.
"I may add that the dove alone epitomizes all these qualities and is the synthesis of all virtue."
"Yes, and she alone is never spoken of as having any evil significance."