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Up to three hundred years ago even the most highly civilized countries of Europe were subject to periodic attacks of famine; our armies and navies were swept and decimated with scurvy, from bad and rotten food-supplies; almost every winter saw epidemics breaking out from the use of half-putrid salted and cured foods; only forty years ago, a careful investigation of one of our most conservative sociologists led him to the conclusion that in Great Britain thirty per cent of the population never in all their lives had quite as much as they could eat, and for five months out of the year were never comfortably warm.
This was a supreme touch of Manuel's art; they were pressed for time, and he had hit upon that deep and politic invention to hasten the surrender of his beloved victim. I nearly cried with the fiery pain on my cracked lips. That piece of half-putrid flesh was salt horribly salt salt like salt itself.
Did they repent of their sin in that? Not they. Did they repent of the carelessness and laziness and covetousness which sends meat and fish up to all our large towns in a half-putrid state; which fills every corner of London and the great cities with slaughter-houses, over-crowded graveyards, undrained sewers? Not they.
The climate was exceedingly unhealthy, but we were fortunately exceptions to the general rule, and although the inhabitants of Sofi were all sufferers, our camp had no invalids, with the exception of Mahomet, who had upon one occasion so gorged himself with half-putrid fish, that he nearly died in consequence.
Considered generally, these peasants of the Haut-Quercy are not fine specimens of the human animal. They are dwarfed, and very often deformed. Their almost exclusively vegetable diet, their excessive toil, and the habit of drinking half-putrid rain-water from cisterns which they very rarely clean, may possibly explain this physical degeneration of the Cadurci.
A little rancid oil, shark, or any other half-putrid fish, a few olives, sour wine, and bread, and they are well feasted. Hotel expenses are not higher than on the Riviera; but amongst the best resident classes living is rather expensive, especially in the matter of clothing, nearly every article of which is imported from England.
It was a desert, sandy coast, and they were almost starved after having reached the land; their only shelter was a small cave in a low ledge of rocks near the beach; they fed upon half-putrid shell-fish thrown upon the sands by the gale, and they drank from the pools of rain-water that had formed on the rock during the storm; for they had saved nothing from the wreck but a sealed bottle, containing their protections as American sailors, some money in an old glove, and a few other papers.
Not even the water she brought him in a forest-leaf, and the ancient and half-putrid chunk of roast pig, could redeem in the slightest the grotesque hideousness of her. When he had eaten weakly for a space, he closed his eyes in order not to see her, although again and again she poked them open to peer at the blue of them. Then had come the sound.
One night, at one of these abominable places, I was obliged to lie on a table, as they had not a bed to give me. I was awakened early by a most horrible smell. I thought I should be suffocated. I procured a light and inspected the room. On opening an old press I found several half-putrid cheeses, full of jumping gentlemen, and probably ladies, for there was a large assembly of them. I made my escape from this savoury, not sweet-smelling den, and threw myself into what they called a chair, which, from its form and ease must have been fabricated before the time of Adam. I found I had seated myself before a kind of crib, something like a corn-bin, in which was lying, fast asleep and snoring, the landlady, who was a coarse, dingy beauty of about forty. “Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil,” ejaculated I to myself. At this time a huge cock that had been roosting in some part of the kitchen gave a loud crow. She started up and called out “Oh, mon Dieu, je ne puis pas dormir
My husband goes to Marseilles to fetch the finest oranges the world produces from Malta, Portugal, Corsica and these I don't touch. Then I hurry there myself, sometimes on foot, and in a little back street, running down to the harbor, close to the Town Hall, I find wretched, half-putrid oranges, two for a sou, which I devour eagerly.
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