“Where then is this new abode?” asked Jules.
“In us, my poor child, in us exclusively. The cherry worm and the nut weevil are content, for the purposes of their metamorphosis, with a hole in the [[344]]sand; but the odious worm of the diseased pig must have the human body for its new home—nothing else.”
“It can’t be that the abominable creature really gets into us.”
“It gets there very easily, and it is we ourselves who unconsciously open the door to the perfidious enemy. Some day or other the pig is killed for our nourishment. Its four legs become hams, other parts are made into sausages, its fat is tried out and stored away. All these various pork products are well salted, carefully dried, or sometimes smoked; nothing is neglected that will assure long keeping. Now in all this thorough treatment, this salting and trying and smoking, what do you think becomes of the little worms inhabiting the diseased flesh?”
“They must die, surely.”
“That is where you are mistaken. They are very tenacious of life, the accursed things! The strongest saline solution leaves them unaffected; but if some or even a great many should perish, there would always be plenty of survivors, for they are numerous beyond counting. Behold, then, our food infected with the vermin that at the first opportunity will invade our bodies. You eat a sausage the size of your finger, or a slice of ham, and the thing is done: with the appetizing mouthful you have just swallowed the horrible creature. Henceforth the enemy is with you, at home; it will grow, develop, be transformed, and cause no end of mischief.”
“But the stomach will digest it, I hope, as it would [[345]]digest anything else; and the hateful intruder will perish.”
“Not at all. The digestive energies of the stomach make no impression on it. It passes through quite untouched, protected perhaps by its resistant shell, and goes farther on to establish itself definitively in the intestines.
“And now all the conditions are the best possible for the worm. The situation is quiet, disturbance from without is not to be apprehended, and the best food in our power to furnish is supplied in abundance. With its double ring of hooks, each one shaped like the fluke of an anchor, the organism fastens itself to the wall of its abode and straightway begins to develop. On its arrival it was a very short and wrinkled little worm, terminating at one end in a small round head, at the other in a spacious bladder. In a short time it will turn into a sort of ribbon that may attain the enormous length of four or five meters.”
“Oh, how horrible!” cried Louis. “Can it be that we serve as a dwelling for such a guest?”