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“Ah well, my dear Virgilio,” replied the Emperor, “in future serve me up as many pigs’ dainties and give me as much pigs’-doctor stuff as you please, provided that all be as good as truffles, or the medicine bran broth. It is foolish to be led by mere fancies: a pig or a peasant may know as well as a prince what is pleasant for the palate or good as a cure. Evviva Virgilio!”

In this merry tale I have followed to the letter an undoubted original, which was in every detail new to me; and this is the more remarkable since there is in it decidedly the stamp and expression of a kind of humour and philosophy which seems to be peculiar to individual or literary genius. The joke of pigs’ dainties, pigs’ remedies, the calling the cook a pig, and the final reduction of the Emperor to a degree below that animal, is carried out with great ingenuity, yet as marked simplicity.

The best truffles in Italy are sold as coming from Norcia, and Nortia, who was an old Etruscan goddess, known to the original Virgil, is in popular tradition in Tuscany the Spirit of Truffles, to whom those who seek them address a scongiurazione, or evocation, which may be found in my “Etrusco-Roman Remains.” In Christian symbolism the truffle is associated with St. Antony and his pig. When the saint had resolved to die by hunger, the pig dug up and brought to him a number of truffles, the saint seeing in this an intimation by a miracle that he should eat and live, which thing would seem to be poetically commemorated in the saucisses aux truffes, or Gotha sausages, in which pork and truffles are beautifully combined.