Krilof and His Fables/The Pig

​

The Pig.

A Pig once made its way into the courtyard of a lordly mansion, sauntered at its will around the stables and the kitchen, wallowed in filth, bathed in slops, and then returned home from its visit a thorough pig.

"Well, Kavronya, what have you seen?" says the Swine­ herd to the Pig. "They do say that there is nothing but pearls and diamonds[1] in rich people's houses, and that there each thing is richer than the rest."

​"I assure you they talk nonsense," grunted Kavronya. "I saw no riches at all—nothing but dirt and offal; and yet you may suppose I didn't spare my snout, for I dug up the whole of the back yard."

God forbid I should hurt any one by my comparison; but how can one help calling those critics Kavronyas who, in whatever they have to discuss, have the faculty of seeing only that which is bad?

  1. ↑ One of Krilof's Russian critics, who has attacked this fable as being "low," finds fault with the two words biser and jemchug, used here by the Swineherd to describe something precious, saying that they both mean pearls. His remark holds good for the old Slavonic; but in modern Russian biser means glass beads of various colours used for stringing, and jemchug, the real pearl.
This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.