“Figues de Melites sans fin,
  J’ai roisin d’outre mer, roisin.”

  ("Figs from Malta without end,
  And grapes from over the sea.”)

Butchers’ Meat.—­According to Strabo, the Gauls were great eaters of meat, especially of pork, whether fresh or salted.  “Gaul,” says he, “feeds so many flocks, and, above all, so many pigs, that it supplies not only Rome, but all Italy, with grease and salt meat.”  The second chapter of the Salic law, comprising nineteen articles, relates entirely to penalties for pig-stealing; and in the laws of the Visigoths we find four articles on the same subject.

[Illustration:  Fig. 84.—­Swineherd.

Illustration:  Fig 85.—­A Burgess at Meals.

Miniatures from the Calendar of a Book of Hours.—­Manuscript of the
Sixteenth Century.]

In those remote days, in which the land was still covered with enormous forests of oak, great facilities were offered for breeding pigs, whose special liking for acorns is well known.  Thus the bishops, princes, and lords caused numerous droves of pigs to be fed on their domains, both for the purpose of supplying their own tables as well as for the fairs and markets.  At a subsequent period, it became the custom for each household, whether in town or country, to rear and fatten a pig, which was killed and salted at a stated period of the year; and this custom still exists in many provinces.  In Paris, for instance, there was scarcely a bourgeois who had not two or three young pigs.  During the day these unsightly creatures were allowed to roam in the streets; which, however, they helped to keep clean by eating up the refuse of all sorts which was thrown out of the houses.  One of the sons of Louis le Gros, while passing, on the 2nd of October, 1131, in the Rue du Martroi, between the Hotel de Ville and the church of St. Gervais, fractured his skull by a fall from his horse, caused by a pig running between that animal’s legs.  This accident led to the first order being issued by the provosts, to the effect that breeding pigs within the town was forbidden.  Custom, however, deep-rooted for centuries, resisted this order, and many others on the same subject which followed it:  for we find, under Francis I., a license was issued to the executioner, empowering him to capture all the stray pigs which he could find in Paris, and to take them to the Hotel Dieu, when he should receive either five sous in silver or the head of the animal.

It is said that the holy men of St. Antoine, in virtue of the privilege attached to the popular legend of their patron, who was generally represented with a pig, objected to this order, and long after maintained the exclusive right of allowing their pigs to roam in the streets of the capital.

The obstinate determination with which every one tried to evade the administrative laws on this subject, is explained, in fact, by the general taste of the French nation for pork.  This taste appears somewhat strange at a time when this kind of food was supposed to engender leprosy, a disease with which France was at that time overrun.