' It is the beauty of real fatness--that fatness
which comes from within, and reacts on the soul that made it, until
soul and body are one deep harmony of fat; that fatness which gave us
the geniality of Silenus, of the late Major O'Gorman; which soothes
all nerves in its owner, and creates the earthy, truistic wisdom of
Sancho Pauza, of Fran‡isque Sarcey; which makes a man selfish, because
there is so much of him, and venerable because he seems to be a knoll
of the very globe we live on, and lazy inasmuch as the form of
government under which he lives is an absolute gastrocracy--the belly
tyrannising over the members whom it used to serve, and wielding its
power as unscrupulously as none but a promoted slave could.
Such is the true fatness. It is not to be confounded with mere
stoutness. Contrast with this Japanese sage that orgulous hidalgo who,
in black velvet, defies modern Prussia from one of Velasquez's
canvases in Berlin. Huge is that other, and gross; and, so puffed his
cheeks are that the light, cast up from below, strives vainly to creep
over them to his eyes, like a tourist vainly striving to creep over a
boulder on a mountainside. Yet is he not of the hierarchy of true
fatness. He bears his bulk proudly, and would sit well any charger
that were strong enough to bear him, and, if such a steed were not in
stables, would walk the distance swingingly.
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