Part 3 (2/2)
there comes the little squirrel out from his bedroom and begins to run round and round in his wire wheel. He has made the same attempt thousands and thousands of times, and yet he makes it once again. Yes, it looks very pretty! when I used to watch my squirrel running round and round in his wire wheel in precisely the same way, and at last the wheel was turning so rapidly that I could not distinguish the bars, I thought it was capital fun. I know now why he runs; he runs in anxious longing for freedom; he runs as long as he has strength to run; for neither is _he_ able to distinguish any more the bars of the turning wheel. He may run a mile and still he is hedged in by the same prison bars. The simple invention is almost diabolically cunning; it is the wheel of Ixion in the Tartarus of pain to which mankind has banished animals.
Here you see a _Wolf from Siberia_. The wolf is also, as is well known, a dangerous, wild beast. When the cold is extreme, and the snow lies very deep, the wolves approach the habitation of man, and in starving crowds they follow any sledge they meet--they have even been known in very rare cases to attack the horses. We have all read that terrible story of the Russian peasant on his way home across the deserted snow-fields; he heard the panting of the wolves behind his sledge, and he could see their eyes glitter through the darkness of the night, and in order to save his own life he had to throw one of his children to the wolves.
The negro informs you that the wild beast in this cage was caught young; the she-wolf as usual was killed while attempting to save her cub.
The bottom of the cage is s.h.i.+ning like a parquet floor from the continual tramping up and down of the prisoner within, for he knows no rest. Night and day he paces to and fro, his head bent low as though in search of some outlet of escape; he will never find it; he will die behind those bars even as the prisoners in his own country die in their irons.
The big _Parrot_ on her perch over there sheds the one ray of light on this dark picture. The parrot I need not describe to you, for you know the species well. This one hails, we are told, from the New World, but one comes across a good many parrots in the Old World also. The parrot is a universal favourite and is to be found in nearly every house. The parrot is not unhappy; she is unconscious of the chain round her leg, she does not realise that she was born with wings. She is undisturbed by any unnecessary brain activity; she eats, she sleeps, trims her gorgeous feather cloak, and chatters ceaselessly from morning till night. Left to herself she is silent, for she is only able to repeat what others have said before her, and this she does so cleverly that often, on hearing some one chatter, I have to ask myself whether it be a human being or a parrot... .
The ragged, attenuated animal standing over there and gazing at us with her soft, sad eyes is a _Chamois from Switzerland_. The chamois is a rarity in a menagerie, for, as is well known, it usually frets to death during the first year of its captivity. I look at the poor animal with a feeling of oppression at my heart which you can scarcely realise--I have breathed the free air of the high mountains myself, and I know why the chamois dies in prison. Those were other times, poor captive chamois, when you were roving on the Alpine meadows amidst rhododendrons and myrtillus; when on high, over a precipice, I saw your beautiful silhouette standing out against the clear, bright sky! You had no need of an alpenstock, you, to climb up there, where I watched the aerial play of your graceful limbs amongst the rocks. Up to the realm of ice you led the way, high on the slopes of Monte Rosa has my clumsy, human foot trodden the snow in the track of your dainty mountain shoes. Ay, those were other times, poor prisoner!--those were other times both for you and me, and we had better say no more about them.
Yonder stalwart, muscular ape is a _Baboon_; _aged, Abyssinian male_, stands written under his cage. He sits there, wrapped in thought, fingering a straw. Now and then he casts a rapid glance around him, and be sure he is not so absent-minded as he looks. The eye is intelligent but malevolent; its owner is a candidate for humanity.
When the negro approaches his cage he shows him a row of teeth not very unlike the negro's own--the family likeness between the two faces is, for the matter of that, unmistakable. The negro cautions the public against accepting the wrinkled hand which the old baboon extends between the bars. I always treat him to an extra lump of sugar ever since the negro told me he once bit off the thumb of an old woman who poked her umbrella at him. Besides, I look at him with veneration, for he comes from an ill.u.s.trious family. Who knows whether he is not an ill-starred descendant of that heroic old baboon whom Brehm once met in Abyssinia?--The negro is sure to know nothing of that story, so I may as well tell it you. One day, while travelling in Abyssinia, the great German naturalist fell in with a whole troop of baboons, who, bound for some high rocks, were marching along a narrow defile. The rear had not yet emerged from the defile when the dogs of Brehm and his companions rushed forward and barred their pa.s.sage. Seeing the danger the other baboons, who had already reached the rocks, then descended in a body to the rescue of the attacked, and they screamed so terribly that the dogs actually fell back; the whole troop of baboons was now filing off in perfect order when the dogs were again set at them. All the apes, however, reached the rocks in safety, with the exception of one half-year-old baboon who happened to have been lagging behind; he was surrounded on all sides by the open-mouthed dogs, and with loud cries of distress he jumped on to a big boulder. At this juncture a huge baboon stepped down from the rocks for the second time, advanced alone to the stone where the little one was crouching, patted him on the back, lifted him gently down, and so led him off triumphantly before the very noses of the dogs, who were so taken by surprise that it never even occurred to them to attack him. One need not have read Darwin to p.r.o.nounce that baboon a hero.
I have noticed that even kind-hearted spectators do not seem to feel very much commiseration for captive monkeys. The ape is playing in the menagerie the same role as Don Quixote in literature--the superficial observer looks upon them as exclusively comical, and only laughs at them. But the attentive looker-on knows that the solitary monkey's life behind the bars is in its way nothing but a tragedy, as well as Cervantes' immortal book is nothing but a mournful epic. With tender emotion he feels how an increasing sympathy mingles in his pitiful smile the more he gets to know of them, these two superannuated types: Don Quixote, the simple-minded, would-be hero, still lagging on the scene long after the _epopee_ of chivalry has departed in the twilight of mediaeval mysticism; and the ape, the phantom from the vanis.h.i.+ng animal world, over whose hairy human face already falls the dawn of the birthday of the first man.
This baboon may perhaps appear to you very ugly, but we know that the perception of physical beauty is an entirely individual one, and it is quite possible that the baboon on his side finds us very ugly. You cannot help smiling now and then when standing and watching him, but, at least, try not to let him see it, for, like all monkeys, it saddens and irritates him to be laughed at to his face. This old baboon is deeply unhappy, for, as he has got more brains than the other animals in the menagerie, his capacity for suffering is consequently greater--for we all know that suffering is an intellectual function. He alone realises the hopelessness of his situation, and his restless brain-activity refuses him the relative oblivion which resignation vouchsafes to many others of his companions in distress.
But as a compensation he possesses one quality which the other animals lack, and it is the possession of this quality which saves him from falling into hypochondria;--it is his sense of humour. That the monkey is a born humorist every one knows who has had the opportunity of observing him in society--for instance, in the monkey-house at the Zoo.
This sense of humour does not even desert the poor monkey kept in solitary confinement. And sometimes when I have been standing here for a while watching the mimicry of this old baboon I have involuntarily had to ask myself whether he were not making fun of me... .
The negro has finished his recital, and it is time for the show-piece of the evening to come off. The spectators crowd in front of the lion-cage, dividing their admiration between Brutus, the Nubian lion, behind the bars and the keeper who, unarmed, is about to enter the cage.
The man throws off his overcoat and the ”Lion King” stands before us in all his pride, pink tights, riding-boots, and his gold-laced breast covered with decorations--from Nubia likewise even these. He is small of stature like Napoleon, and the constant intercourse with the wild beasts has given his face a rough and repulsive expression. He reeks of brandy, to counteract the stale smell of the cage, and his pomatumed hair curls neatly round his low-sloping forehead. The negro hands him a whip, and the solemn moment is at hand. Proudly the Lion King creeps into the cage, and proudly he cracks his whip at the half-sleeping Brutus. The lion raises himself with a sullen roar, and, hugging the walls, begins to wander round his cage. Proudly the Lion King stretches out his whip, and obediently like a dog Brutus leaps lazily over it. Proudly the negro hands his master a hoop, and wearily and dejectedly Brutus jumps through it. Brutus is sulky to-night; he does not roar as he ought to do. Things look up, however, towards the end of the performance, when the Lion King, standing in a corner of the cage, paralyses Brutus with a proud look just as he is about to attack him. Brutus is no longer obstinate, but roars irreproachably, and shows his yellow fang. A few half-smothered cries of alarm are heard from the audience, an old woman faints, a pistol is fired off while the Lion King, under cover of the smoke, hurriedly and proudly creeps out of the cage.
Captive lion, have you then forgotten that once you were a king yourself, that once there was a time when all men trembled at your approach, that the forest grew silent when your imperious voice resounded? Fallen monarch, awake from the degradation of your thraldom; rise giant-like and let the thunder of your royal voice be heard once more!
Brutus, Brutus, vindicator of lost freedom, you are too proud to be a slave! Rend asunder the chains which coward human cunning has bound around the sleeping power of your limbs!
Shake your flaming lion mane, and, strong as Samson, in your mighty wrath bring down the prison walls around you to crush the Philistines a.s.sembled here to jeer at the impotence of their once dreaded enemy!
Brutus, Brutus, vindicator of lost freedom!
[Footnote 13: Perhaps you are not aware of the common practice in menageries of keeping a rabbit in the monkey's cage for the sake of warmth.]
ITALY IN PARIS
At one time I had many patients in the Roussel Yard. Ten or twelve families lived there, but none were so badly off, I believe, as the Salvatore family. At Salvatore's it was so dark that they were obliged to burn a little oil-lamp the whole day, and there was no fireplace except a brazier which stood in the middle of the floor. Damp as a cellar it was at all times; but when it rained the water penetrated into the room, which lay a couple of feet lower than the street.
And nevertheless one could see in everything a kind of pathetic struggle against the gloomy impression which the dwelling itself made. Old ill.u.s.trated papers were pasted up round the walls, the bed was neat and clean, and behind an old curtain in one corner, the family's little wardrobe was hung up in the neatest order. Salvatore himself, with skilful hand, had made the little girl's bed out of an old box, and in the day one could sit upon it as if it were a sofa. The corner shelf where the Madonna stood was adorned with bright-coloured paper flowers, and there, too, the small treasures of the family lay spread out,--the gilt brooch which Salvatore had presented to his wife when they were married; the string of corals which her brother had brought from the coral fishery in ”Barbaria” (Algeria); the two gorgeous cups out of which coffee was drunk on solemn occasions; and there, too, stood the wonderful porcelain dog which Concetta had once received as a present from a grand lady, and which was only taken down on Sundays to be admired more closely.
I did not understand how the mother managed it; but the little girls were always neat and tidy in their outgrown clothes, and their faces shone, so washed and polished were they. The eldest child, Concetta, had been at the free school for more than half a year; and it was the mother's pride to make her read aloud to me out of her book. She herself had never learned to read, and although I allowed myself to be told that Salvatore read very well, neither he nor I had ever ventured to try his capabilities. Now, since Petruccio could hardly ever get out of bed, Concetta had been obliged to give up going to school, so that she might stay at home with her sick brother whilst _la mamma_ was at her work away in the eating-house. This place could not be given up, as not only did she get ten sous a day for was.h.i.+ng dishes, but sometimes she could bring home sc.r.a.ps under her ap.r.o.n, which no one else could turn to account, but out of which she managed to make a capital soup for Petruccio.
Salvatore himself worked the whole day away in La Villette. He was obliged to be at the stone-mason's yard at six o'clock every morning, and it was much too far to go home during the mid-day rest. Sometimes it happened that I was there when he came home in the evening after his day's work, and then he looked very proudly at me when Petruccio stretched out his arms towards him. He took his little son up so carefully with his big h.o.r.n.y hands, lifted him on his broad shoulders, and tenderly leaned his sunburnt cheek against the sick little one's waxen face. Petruccio sat quite quiet and silent on his father's arm; sometimes he laid hold of his father's matted beard with his thin fingers, and then Salvatore looked very happy. ”_Vedete, Signor dottore_,” he then would say, ”_n'e vero che sta meglio sta sera?_”[14]
He received his week's wages every Sat.u.r.day, and then he always came home triumphantly with a little toy for his son, and both father and mother knelt down beside the bed to see how Petruccio liked it.
Petruccio, alas! liked scarcely anything. He took the toy in his hand, but that was all. Petruccio's face was old and withered, and his solemn, weary eyes were not the eyes of a child. I had never known him cry or complain, but neither had I seen him smile except once when he was given a great hairy horse--a horse which stretched out its tongue when one turned it upside down. But it was not every day that a horse like that could be got.
Petruccio was four years old, but he could not speak. He would lie hour after hour quite quiet and silent, but he did not sleep: his great eyes stood wide open, and it seemed as if he saw something far beyond the narrow walls of the room--”_Sta sempre in pensiero_,”[15] said Salvatore.
Petruccio was supposed to understand everything which was said around him, and nothing of importance was undertaken in the little family without first trying to discover Petruccio's opinion of the affair; and if any one believed that they could read disapproval in the features of the soulless little one, the whole question fell to the ground at once, and it was afterwards found that Petruccio had almost always been right.
On Sundays Salvatore sat at home, and there were usually some other holiday-dressed workmen visiting him, and in low-toned voices they sat and argued about wages, about news from _il paese_, and sometimes Salvatore treated them to a litre of wine, and they played a game, _alla scopa_. Sometimes it was supposed that Petruccio wished to look on, and then his little bed was moved to the bench where they sat; and sometimes Petruccio wished to be alone, and then Salvatore and his guests moved out into the pa.s.sage. I had, however, remarked that Petruccio's wish to be alone, and the consequent removal of the company to the pa.s.sage, usually happened when the wife was away: if she were at home she saw plainly that Petruccio wished his father to stay indoors and not go out with the others. And Petruccio was right enough there, too. Salvatore was not very difficult to persuade if one of the guests wished to treat him in his turn. Once out in the pa.s.sage, it happened often enough that he went off to the wine-shop too. And once there, it was not so easy for Salvatore to get away again.
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