"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the
fatted calf."
"It is a
fatted calf from the pastures of Bashan," said the Pharisee, "the heathen have dealt wonderfully with us let us raise up our voices in a psalm --let us give thanks on the shawm and on the psaltery-on the harp and on the huggab-on the cythern and on the sackbut!"
But this programme was not to be begun before evening - not till just before dinner, indeed, at which meal the reassembled family were to sit roseate, and the best wine, the modern
fatted calf, should flow for the prodigal's return.
These Eloi were mere
fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of.
"So much the better, mordioux!" replied D'Artagnan; "if he is a Puritan we will inform him of the capture of the king, and in honor of the news he will kill for us his
fatted hens."
It amused him to look out into the beating rain, searching for the two hills and imagining that the torrents from above had washed them away, yet he knew that presently the rain would cease, the sun come out again and all be as it was before, except where a few branches had fallen and here and there some old and rotted patriarch had crashed back to enrich the soil upon which he had
fatted for, maybe, centuries.
It would seem that his search was fruitless; for after a few moments of indolent and listless examination, he suffered his huge frame to descend the gentle declivity, in the same sluggish manner that an over
fatted beast would have yielded to the downward pressure.
He took the wolf and locked him up in a cage, with a piece of meat that satisfied, in quantity at any rate, the elementary conditions of the
fatted calf, and went off to report.
Tarwater arrived home a true prodigal grandfather for whom the
fatted calf was killed and ready.
In these days of
fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian's God in the southwest, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe.
Had I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, as in our blessed Saviour's parable, had even killed the
fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he had any assurances that I was not drowned.
The
fatted calf is dressed for me, But the husks have greater zest for me ...