there appeared on the square at Passy a gray moke, with sores on its
back, and drooping ears, one of those wretched mountebanks' asses that
Decamps and Fouquet used to paint so well. The two baskets balanced on
either side of his raw and prominent backbone contained a troupe of
trained dogs, dressed as marquesses, troubadours, Turks, Alpine
shepherdesses, or Queens of Golconda, according to their sex. The
impresario put down the dogs, cracked his whip, and suddenly every one
of the actors forsook the horizontal for the perpendicular position, and
transformed itself into a biped. The drum and fife started up and the
ballet commenced.
Zamore, who was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at
the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation
gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and
moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to
human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The
skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not
discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael's painting, he
exclaimed in his canine speech, _Anch' io son pittore!_ and when the
company filed past him, he also, filled with a noble spirit of
emulation, rose up, somewhat uncertainly, upon his hind legs and
attempted to join them, to the great delight of the onlookers.
The manager did not see it in that light, and let fly a smart cut of his
whip at Zamore, who was driven from the circle, just as a spectator
would be ejected from the theatre did he, during the performance, take
on himself to ascend to the stage and to take part in the ballet.
This public humiliation did not check Zamore's vocation. He returned
home with drooping tail and thoughtful mien, and during the whole of the
remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose
than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight
sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded
from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to
bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more
sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice
were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was
too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the
door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she
beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and
busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that
morning. The gentleman was practising!
Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary
attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned
out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run
out on the square, slip between the spectators' legs and watch, with the
closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful,
however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the
dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and
then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them,
remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever.
Ere long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to
inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated
style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he
practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the
bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.
When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most
accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his
light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his
accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by
an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout
dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog
friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters
of invitation to his début in the choregraphic art, met around a square
of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously
swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be
delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by _ouahs!_ _ouahs!_ closely
resembling the _bravi_ of dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole
exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and
a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound
tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and
the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a
_deux temps_ waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined
the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded
by human hands.
Dancing became so much a habit of his that when he was paying court to
some fair, he would stand up on his hind legs, making bows and turning
his toes out like a marquis of the _ancien régime_. All he lacked was
the plumed hat under his arm.
Apart from this he was as hypochondriacal as a comic actor and took no
part in the life of the household. He stirred only when he saw his
master pick up his hat and stick. Zamore died of brain fever, brought
on, no doubt, by overwork in trying to learn the schottische, then in
the full swing of its popularity. Zamore may say within his tomb, as
says the Greek dancer in her epitaph: "Earth, rest lightly on me, for I
rested lightly on thee."
How came it that being so talented, Zamore was not enrolled in Corvi's
company? For I was even then sufficiently influential as a critic to
manage this for him. Zamore, however, would not leave his master, and
sacrificed his self-love to his affection, a proof of devotion which one
would look for in vain among men.
A singer, named Kobold, a thorough-bred King Charles from the famous
kennels of Lord Lauder, took the place of the dancer. It was a queer
little beast, with an enormous projecting forehead, big goggle eyes,
nose broken short off at the root, and long ears trailing on the ground.
When Kobold was brought to France, knowing no language but English, he
was quite bewildered. He could not understand the orders given him;
trained to answer to "Go on," or "Come here," he remained motionless
when he was told in French, "Viens," or "Va-t'en." It took him a year to
learn the tongue of the new country in which he found himself and to
take part in the conversation. Kobold was very fond of music, and
himself sang little songs with a very strong English accent. The A would
be struck on the piano, and he caught the note exactly and modulated
with a flute-like sound phrases that were really musical and that had no
connection whatever with barking or yelping. When we wanted to make him
go on, all we had to do was to say, "Sing a little more," and he would
repeat the cadence. Although he was fed with the utmost care, as was
proper in the case of a tenor singer and so distinguished a gentleman,
Kobold had one eccentric taste: he would eat earth just like a South
American savage. We never succeeded in curing him of the habit, which
proved the cause of his death. He was very fond of the stablemen, the
horses, and the stable, and my ponies had no more constant companion
than he. He spent his time between their loose-boxes and the piano.
After Kobold, the King Charles, came Myrza, a tiny Havana poodle that
had the honour of being for a time the property of Giulia Grisi, who
gave her to me. She is snow-white, especially when she is fresh from her
bath and has not had time to roll over in the dust, a fancy some dogs
share with dust-loving birds. She is extremely gentle and affectionate,
and as sweet-tempered as a dove. Her little fluffy face, her two little
eyes that might be mistaken for upholstery nails, and her little nose
like a Piedmont truffle, are most comical. Tufts of hair, curly as
Astrakhan fur, fall over her face in the most picturesque and unexpected
way, hiding first one eye and then the other, so that she has the most
peculiar appearance imaginable and squints like a chameleon.
In Myrza, nature imitates the artificial so perfectly that the little
creature looks as if she had stepped out of a toy-shop. When her coat is
nicely curled, and she has got on her blue ribbon bow and her silver
bell, she is the image of a toy dog, and when she barks it is impossible
not to wonder whether there is a bellows under her paws.
She spends three-fourths of her time in sleep, and her life would not be
much changed were she stuffed, nor does she seem particularly clever in
the ordinary intercourse of life. Yet she one day exhibited an amount of
intelligence absolutely unparalleled in my experience. Bonnegrâce, the
painter of the portraits of Tchoumakoff and E. H., which attracted so
much attention at the exhibitions, had brought to me, in order to get my
opinion upon it, one of his portraits painted in the manner of Pagnest,
remarkable for truthfulness of colour and vigour of modelling. Although
I have lived on terms of closest intimacy with animals and could tell a
hundred traits of the ingenuity, reasoning, and philosophical powers of
cats, dogs, and birds, I am bound to confess that animals wholly lack
any feeling for art. Never have I seen a single one notice a picture,
and the story of the birds that picked at the grapes in the painting by
Zeuxis, strikes me as a piece of invention. It is precisely the feeling
for ornament and art that distinguishes man from brutes. Dogs never look
at pictures and never put on earrings. Well, Myrza, at the sight of the
portrait placed against the wall by Bonnegrâce, sprang from the stool on
which she was lying curled up, dashed at the canvas and barked furiously
at it, trying to bite the stranger who had made his way into the room.
Great was her surprise when she found herself compelled to recognise
that she had a plane surface before her, that her teeth could not lay
hold of it, and that it was no more than a vain presentment. She smelled
the picture, tried to wedge in behind the frame, looked at us both with
a glance of questioning and wonder, and returned to her place, where she
disdainfully went to sleep again, refusing to have anything more to do
with the painted individual. Myrza's features will not be lost to
posterity, for there is a fine portrait of her by the Hungarian artist,
Victor Madarasz.
Let me close with the story of Dash. One day a dealer in broken bottles
and glass stopped at my door in quest of such wares. He had in his cart
a puppy, three or four months old, which he had been commissioned to
drown, whereat the worthy fellow grieved much, for the dog kept looking
at him with a tender and beseeching look as if he knew well what was
going to happen. The reason of the severe sentence passed on the puppy
was that he had broken his fore paw. My heart was filled with pity for
him, and I took charge of the condemned creature; called in a vet, and
had Dash's paw set in splints and bandaged. It was impossible, however,
to stop him gnawing at the dressings; the paw could not be cured, and
the bones not having knitted, it hung limp like the sleeve of a man who
has lost an arm. His infirmity, however, did not prevent his being
jolly, lively, and full of fun, and he managed to race along quite fast
on his three legs.
He was an out and out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon
himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his
features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed
to understand what was told him, and his expression would change
according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were
flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips,
indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or else grinned and
showed his white teeth, obtaining in this way most comical effects of
which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his
paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a
series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it
was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a
conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp,
and then I would look sternly at him and say: "That is barking, not
speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?" Dash, feeling
humiliated at the suggestion, would go on with his vocalisation, giving
it the most pathetic expression. We used to say then that Dash was
telling his tale of woe.
He was passionately fond of sugar, and at dessert, when coffee was
brought in, he would invariably beg each guest for a piece with such
insistence that he was always successful. He had ended by transforming
this merely benevolent gift into a regular tax which he collected with
unfailing regularity. He was but a little mongrel, yet with the frame of
a Thersites he had the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he
would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and
was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
to a small greyhound.
Dash's death was the first of a series of catastrophes: the mistress of
the house where he met with the death-stroke was, a few days later,
burned alive in her bed, and the same fate overtook her husband who was
trying to save her. This was merely a fatal coincidence and by no means
an expiation, for these people were of the kindest and as fond of
animals as is a Brahmin, besides being wholly innocent of our poor
Dash's tragic fate.
It is true that I have still another dog, called Nero, but he is too
recent an inmate of our home to have a story of his own.
(NOTE.--Alas! Nero has been poisoned quite recently, just as if he had
been supping with the Borgias, and his epitaph comes in the very first
chapter of his life.)
V
MY HORSES
Now let not the reader, on seeing this title, hastily accuse me of being
a swell. Horses! That is a pretentious word to be written down by a man
of letters! _Musa pedestris_, says Horace; that is, the Muse goes on
foot, and Parnassus itself has but one horse in its stable, Pegasus.
Besides, he is a winged steed and by no means quiet in harness, if we
may credit what Schiller tells us in his ballad. I am not a sportsman,
alas! and deeply do I regret it, for I am as fond of horses as if I had
five hundred thousand a year, and I am entirely of the opinion of the
Arabs concerning pedestrians. The horse is man's natural pedestal, and
the one complete being is the centaur, whom mythology so ingeniously
invented.
Nevertheless, although I am merely a man of letters, I have owned
horses. In the year 1843 or 1844, I found in the pay-dirt of journalism,
washed out in the wooden pan of the _feuilleton_, a sufficient quantity
of gold dust to justify the hope that I might feed, besides my cats,
dogs, and magpies, a couple of animals of larger size. I first had a
couple of Shetland ponies, the size of big dogs, hairy as bears, all
mane and tail, and who looked at me in such friendly fashion through
their long black hair that I felt more like showing them into the
drawing-room than sending them to the stable. They would take sugar out
of my pockets like trained horses. But they proved to be decidedly too
small; they would have answered as saddle horses for English children
eight years of age, or as coach horses for Tom Thumb, but I was already
in the enjoyment of that athletic and portly frame for which I am famed,
and which has enabled me to bear up, without bending too much under the
burden, under forty consecutive years of supplying of copy. The
difference between the owner and the animals was unquestionably too
striking, even though the little black ponies drew at a very lively gait
the light phaeton to which they were harnessed with the daintiest tan
harness, that looked as if it had been bought in a toy shop.
Comic illustrated papers were not as numerous then as now, but there
were quite enough of them to publish caricatures of me and of my
horses. It goes without saying that, profiting by the latitude allowed
to caricature, I was represented as of elephantine bulk and appearance,
like the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were
shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I
could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken
the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think of having a pony
four-in-hand, but such a Liliputian equipage would have merely attracted
greater attention. So to my great regret, for I had already become fond
of them, I replaced my Shetlands with two dapple-gray cobs of larger
size, with powerful necks, broad chests, stout and well set up, which
were not Mecklenburghers, no doubt, but plainly more capable of dragging
me along. They were both mares, the one called Jane, the other Betsy. So
far as outward looks went, they were as alike as two peas, and never was
there a better matched pair apparently. But Betsy was as lazy as Jane
was willing. While the one drew steadily, the other was satisfied with
trotting along, saving herself and taking good care to do nothing. These
two animals, of the same breed, of the same age, and destined to live in
the same stable, had the liveliest antipathy for each other. They could
not bear one another, fought in the stable, and bit each other as they
reared in harness. It was impossible to reconcile them, which was a
pity, for with their hog manes, like those of the horses on the
Parthenon frieze, their quivering nostrils, and their eyes dilated with
anger, they looked uncommonly handsome as they were driven up or down
the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. A substitute had to be found for Betsy,
and a small mare, somewhat lighter coloured, for it had been impossible
to match her exactly, was brought round. Jane immediately welcomed the
new-comer and did the honours of the stable to her most graciously, and
ere long they became fast friends. Jane would rest her head on Blanche's
neck--she had been so called because her gray coat was rather
whitish--and when they were let loose in the yard after being rubbed
down, they would play together like a pair of dogs of children. If one
was taken out driving, the one left in the stable was plainly wearying
for her, and as soon as she heard in the distance the ring of her
companion's hoofs on the paving-stones, she set up a joyous neigh, like
a trumpet-blast, to which the other did not fail to reply as she
approached.
They would come up to be harnessed with astonishing docility, and took
of themselves their proper place by the pole. Like all animals that are
loved and well treated, Jane and Blanche soon became most familiar and
trusting. They would follow me without bridle or halter like the
best-trained dog, and when I stopped they would stick their noses on my
shoulder in order to be caressed. Jane was fond of bread, and Blanche of
sugar, and both were crazy about melon skin. I could make them do
anything in return for these dainties.
If man were not odiously brutal and ferocious, as he too frequently
shows himself towards animals, they would cling to him most gladly.
Their dim brain is filled with the thought of that being who thinks,
speaks, and does things the meaning of which escapes them; he is a
mystery and a wonder to them. They will often look at you with eyes full
of questions you cannot answer, for the key to their speech has not yet
been found. Yet they have a speech which enables them to exchange, by
means of intonations not yet noted by man, ideas that are rudimentary,
no doubt, but which are such as may be conceived by creatures within
their sphere of action and feeling. Less stupid than we are, animals
succeed in understanding a few words of our idiom, but not enough to
enable them to converse with us. Besides, as the words they do learn
refer solely to what we exact of them, the conversation would be brief.
But that animals speak cannot be doubted by any one who has lived in any
degree of intimacy with dogs, cats, horses, or other creatures of that
sort.
For instance, Jane was naturally intrepid; she never refused, and
nothing frightened her, but after a few months of cohabitation with
Blanche her character changed and she manifested at times sudden and
inexplicable fear. Her companion, much less brave, must have told her
ghost stories at night. Often, when going through the Bois de Boulogne
at dusk or after dark, Blanche would stop short or shy, as if a phantom,
invisible to me, had risen up before her. She trembled in every limb,
breathed hard, and broke out into sweat. If I attempted to urge her
ahead with the whip, she backed, and all Jane could do, strong as she
was, was insufficient to induce her to go on. One of us would have to
get down, cover her eyes with the hand and lead her until the vision had
vanished. Little by little Jane became subject to the same terror, the
reason of which, no doubt, Blanche told her once they were back in their
stable. I may as well confess that for my part, when I would be driving
down a dark road on which the moonlight produced alternations of light
and shadow, and Blanche suddenly became rooted to the spot as though a
spectre had sprung at her head, and refused to move,--she who was
usually so docile that Queen Mab's whip, made of a cricket's bone with a
spider's thread for a thong, was enough to start her into a gallop,--I
could not repress a slight shudder or refrain from peering into the
darkness rather anxiously, while at times the harmless trunks of ash or
birch trees would appear to me as spectral-looking as one of Goya's
"Caprices."
I took great delight in driving these dear animals myself, and we soon
became very intimate. It was merely as a matter of form that I held the
reins, for the least click of the tongue was enough to direct them, to
turn them to the right or the left, to make them go faster, or to stop
them. They quickly learned all my habits and started of themselves for
the office, the printer's, the publishers', the Bois de Boulogne, and
the houses where I went to dinner on certain days of the week, and this
so accurately that they would have ended by compromising me, for they
would have revealed the places to which I paid the most mysterious
visits. If I happened to forget the time in the course of an interesting
or tender conversation they would remind me it was getting late by
neighing or pawing in front of the balcony.