In vain have I recapitulated all that my reading has taught me concerning the rustic dietary of ancient times; I can recollect no mention of the haricot.  The worker in the vineyard and the harvester have their lupins, broad beans, peas, and lentils, but never the bean of beans, the haricot.

The haricot has a reputation of another kind.  It is a source of flatulence; you eat it, as the saying is, and then you take a walk.  It lends itself to the gross pleasantries loved of the populace; especially when they are formulated by the shameless genius of an Aristophanes or a Plautus.  What merriment over a simple allusion to the sonorous bean, what guffaws from the throats of Athenian sailors or Roman porters!  Did the two masters, in the unfettered gaiety of a language less reserved than our own, ever mention the virtues of the haricot?  No; they are absolutely silent concerning the trumpet-voiced vegetable.

The name of the bean is a matter for reflection.  It is of an unfamiliar sound, having no affinity with our language.  By its unlikeness to our native combinations of sounds, it makes one think of the West Indies or South America, as do caoutchouc and cacao.  Does the word as a matter of fact come from the American Indians?  Did we receive, together with the vegetable, the name by which it is known in its native country?  Perhaps; but how are we to know?  Haricot, fantastic haricot, you set us a curious philological problem.

It is also known in French as faseole, or flageolet.  The Provencal calls it faiou and faviou; the Catalan, fayol; the Spaniard, faseolo; the Portuguese, feyao; the Italian, fagiuolo.  Here I am on familiar ground:  the languages of the Latin family have preserved, with the inevitable modifications, the ancient word faseolus.

Now, if I consult my dictionary I find:  faselus, faseolus, phaseolus, haricot.  Learned lexicographer, permit me to remark that your translation is incorrect:  faselus, faseolus cannot mean haricot.  The incontestable proof is in the Georgics, where Virgil tells us at what season we must sow the faselus.  He says:—­

  Si vero viciamque seres vilemque faselum ... 
  Haud obscura cadens mittet tibi signa Bootes;
  Incipe, et ad medias sementem extende pruinas.

Nothing is clearer than the precept of the poet who was so admirably familiar with all matters agricultural; the sowing of the faselus must be commenced when the constellation of Bootes disappears at the set of sun, that is, in October; and it is to be continued until the middle of the winter.

These conditions put the haricot out of the running:  it is a delicate plant, which would never survive the lightest frost.  Winter would be fatal to it, even under Italian skies.  More refractory to cold on account of the country of their origin, peas, broad beans, and vetches, and other leguminous plants have nothing to fear from an autumn sowing, and prosper during the winter provided the climate be fairly mild.