CHAMELEONS, LIZARDS, AND MAGPIES.
Once upon a time we happened to be at the port of Santa-Maria in the Bay
of Cadiz, a little village which seems cut out of the white loaf of
Spain, between the indigo of the sea and the lapis-lazuli of the sky. It
was noon, and on that particular day such a warm noon that the sun
appeared to be amusing himself by dropping spoonfuls of melted lead on
the heads of travellers, as the garrison of a beleaguered fortress, by
some well-planned artifice, pours boiling oil or pitch on the heads of
its assailants. This picturesque little port is made famous by the
celebrated song in the Andalusian _patois_ of Murillo-Bravo, “The Bulls
of Puerto,” in which the gallant boatman says to the lady about to
embark, “Lleve V. la patita.” We hummed the refrain in a voice which
sings no less falsely in Spanish than in French, following with our
eyes, as we sang, the line, straight as the selvage of a piece of linen,
which was cast by the shadow at the foot of the wall.
[Illustration: THE CHAMELEON.]
It was a market day, and foreign commodities of all sorts were exposed
for sale on the square, which were of colors gorgeous enough to enchant
Ziem himself. Garlands of fiery-red peppers swung above deep-green
melons, some of which had been cut in halves to show the rose-colored
pulp within, dotted with black spots like a shell from the South Seas.
Heavy clusters of clear, yellow grapes, like amber beads, reminding one
by their fair transparency of Turkish rosaries, hung by the side of
bunches of a bluish color, and others which were of an amethystine hue
shading into deeper purple. Chickpeas in weedy mats rounded their globes
of paly gold; pomegranates, bursting their rinds, showed caskets of
rubies within. The fruit-sellers, with their scarlet and yellow capes,
their black silk petticoats, bare feet thrust into satin slippers,—and
what feet, hardly bigger than a Savoy biscuit!—their paper fans held
against the cheek to take the place of a parasol, sat proudly beside
their vegetables chattering with that Andalusian volubility which is so
full of grace. Here and there some passing gallant, balancing himself on
the point of his white cane, his jacket swinging from his shoulders, a
broad sash from Gibraltar encircling his waist from armpit to hips, his
elastic breeches open at the knee, and leathern boots from Ronda
unbuttoned all the way up the leg, in what seems to be the height of the
style, lingered a moment to cast a seductive glance while rolling
between thumb and forefinger his cigarette of alcoy paper. It was one of
those blinding effects of southern light and color which would be called
an exaggeration of nature if any artist should attempt to reproduce in
full its crude and dazzling truth.
We sought a refuge from the fiery sun shower in the patio of The Three
Moorish Kings. A _patio_, as all the world knows, is an inside court
surrounded by arcades, whose arrangement reminds one of the ancient
_impluvium_. In place of a roof it is shaded by a linen awning striped
with gay colors, called in Spanish a _velarium_, which is kept
constantly wet, in order to secure greater coolness. In the middle of
this patio a slender thread of water rose and fell from a marble basin,
throwing a fine spray over boxes of myrtles, pomegranates and oleanders,
which were grouped about it. Sofas covered with horse-hair, and
cane-seated chairs, were scattered about under the arcades. Guitars,
suspended on the walls, cast brilliant reflections out of the shadow, as
the light glinted on their varnished surfaces, and beside them hung the
brown disks of tambourines.
These patios are common in the Moorish houses of Algeria, and no better
contrivance to secure coolness can be imagined. They are a device of the
Arabs adopted by the Spaniards. Upon the capitals of the smaller
columns, in many dwellings, can still be read verses from the Koran
glorifying Allah, or laudations of some caliph long ago driven back into
the heart of Africa and forgotten.
After draining an unglazed jug of cold water we retired to one of the
rooms opening on the patio for a siesta. Our drowsy eyes wandered to the
ceiling of the low chamber, which, like all Spanish ceilings, was
whitewashed, and ornamented in the middle by a rosette picked out into
yellow, black, and red sections like the sides of a ball. From this
rosette hung a cord meant, without doubt, to hold a lamp; and along this
cord a mysterious object was moving upward. We fitted our eyeglass into
its place under the arch of our eyebrow, and at last made out that the
thing, which with so much pains was climbing on the cord toward the
ceiling, was a kind of lizard, of a grayish yellow, and a shape which
had about it something monstrous, recalling in miniature those vast
Saurians which disappeared from earth at the close of the antediluvian
epoch.
The maid of the inn was summoned,—Pepa, Lola, or Casilda, we cannot
recall the exact name, but are ready to swear that she was an excellent
person,—and she explained that the creature on the cord was a chameleon.
Lola,—if Lola it was,—taking pity on our ignorance, and perhaps not
sorry to exhibit her own zoölogical knowledge, said to us in an
instructive way, “These animals change their color, you know, according
to the place where they happen to be, and they live on air.”
During our brief conversation the chameleons (for there were two)
continued their ascension of the cord. Nothing more absurd than their
appearance could be imagined. It must be admitted that the chameleon is
not beautiful, and, although people say that Nature does everything
well, it strikes us that by taking a very little more trouble she might
easily have made a prettier animal than he. But, like all great artists,
Nature has her caprices, and she occasionally amuses herself by
modelling grotesque shapes. The eyes of the chameleon, which are almost
completely detached from the head, are fitted into external membranous
sacs, and have complete independence of movement. They can look to the
right with one and to the left with the other, cast one up to the skies
and the other down to the floor, producing thereby a variety of squints
which have the most extraordinary effect. A swollen pouch under the jaw,
not unlike a goitre, gives the poor animal an air of haughty complacency
and stupid conceit, of which he is as unconscious as he is innocent. His
awkwardly formed paws make a projecting angle above the line of his
back, and his movements are alike ungraceful and meaningless.
One of the chameleons had now reached the top of the string and the
centre of the rosette. Putting out a pitiful little paw, he tried the
ceiling to see if it were possible to cling to it, and in that way to
effect an escape. In making this experiment, for the hundredth time
perhaps, he squinted with his eyes in the most desperate and touching
way, as if invoking aid from heaven and earth; then, seeing no hope of
egress on that side, he slowly began to descend the cord again, with a
sad, resigned, and piteous look,—emblem of useless labor, a Sisyphus of
wasted energies. Half-way down the two creatures met, exchanged glances
meant to be friendly, perhaps, but horrible from their squints, and for
a moment or two formed a group which was like a hideous bunch on the
perpendicular line of the string.
After a few ludicrous contortions the group disentangled, each chameleon
continuing its journey, the one which was coming down reaching the end
of the cord, stretching out a hind leg, sounding the air cautiously and
finding no place of support, drawing it in again with a discouraged
movement whose heart-breaking and absurd melancholy baffles all
description. By one of those associations of ideas which cannot be
accounted for, but which the mind conceives without understanding why,
the chameleons reminded me of one of Goya’s gloomiest etchings, in which
are represented spectres, who, with feeble and shadowy arms, are trying
to lift heavy stones which roll back upon and crush them,—an unequal
conflict of weakness with destiny.
In order to deliver these poor animals from their sufferings we bought
for them a rough sort of cage. It was of good size, and, once installed
therein, they were able to dispense with those acrobatic exercises which
seemed to make them so miserable. As to the question of food, with all
respect for Southern frugality, this living on air by its very name
seems insufficient. A Spanish lover may, perhaps, be able to breakfast
on a glass of water, dine on a cigarette, and sup on a tune from his
mandolin; but the tastes of chameleons are less refined, and they crave
and devour flies, which they catch, in the oddest manner, by darting out
from the throat a sort of long lance covered with a viscous slime, which
adheres to the wings of the insect, and, when drawn in again, carries
him bodily along with it into the gullet.
Do chameleons change their color according to the place where they
happen to be? In the literal sense of the words they do not, but their
skins, broken by little facet-shaped roughnesses, absorb the hues of
surrounding objects more easily than other bodies do. Placed near a red
thing, or a yellow or a green one, the chameleon seems to steep itself
in that color, but, after all, it is but an effect of refraction. A
plate of polished metal will be colored in the same way; there is no
real power of absorption. In its ordinary state the chameleon is of a
gray-green or a yellowish gray. However, those who have a taste for
marvels may, if they like, assert that the chameleon changes its color
at will, and is thus the proper emblem of political versatility; but we
must be permitted to say in our turn that after the minutest
observations, continued for a long time, we are convinced that
chameleons are entirely indifferent to affairs of state and everything
connected with them.
We were anxious to carry our chameleons home with us, but the autumn was
near at hand, and, though the sun still had a great deal of heat as we
followed the coast northward from Tarifa to Port Vendres, passing by
Gibraltar, Malaga, Alicante, Almeria, Valencia, and Barcelona, the poor
beasts faded away before our very sight. As they wasted, their eyes
seemed to project from their heads, and day by day to increase in
prominence. Their squint increased; under their loose and flabby skins
their tiny skeletons grew more and more distinct with every mile. It was
a piteous sight,—these consumptive lizards feebly going through the
death dance, and too weak even to thrust their sticky tongues out for
the flies which we collected for them in the galley of the steamer. They
died within a few days of each other, and the blue Mediterranean was
their grave.
From chameleons to lizards the transition is easy. Our youngest daughter
once received the present of a lizard which had been caught at
Fontainebleau, and which became very fond of her. Jacques’ color was the
most beautiful Veronese green that can be imagined. His eyes were very
bright, his scales overlapped each other with the most perfect
regularity, and his movements were extraordinarily swift. He never left
his little mistress, and usually lay hidden in a loop of her hair near
the comb. Nestled there, he accompanied her to the play, to walk, to
evening parties, without once betraying his presence; only, when the
young girl was playing on the piano, he would desert his retreat,
descend her shoulder and creep out to the end of the arm, always
preferring the right hand, which plays the air, to the left, which makes
the accompaniment,—thus testifying to his preference for melody over
harmony.
Jacques’ house was a glass box lined with moss, which had once contained
Russian cigars from the Eliseïeph manufactory. His private life may
therefore be justly said to have lain open to the public. His food
consisted of drops of milk, which he preferred to take from the end of
his mistress’s finger. He died of grief and hunger during her absence on
a journey, to which she had not dared to expose him on account of the
severity of the weather.
There is nothing to be told of Balylas, the sparrow, but that he died.
One blow under his wing, from a claw, finished his career, and he was
buried in a domino-box.
It now only remains for us to describe Margot, the magpie,—a most
intelligent and chatty gossip, worthy to live in an osier cage in the
window of a concierge and be fed with white cheese. We wasted much time
in trying to teach her the dead languages. She never could be taught to
pronounce correctly the Latin for “Bonjour,” as did the Pompeiian
magpies. She could not say “Ave,” but she said a great many other
things. She was a most comical and entertaining bird, who would play at
hide-and-go-seek with the children, dance the Pyrrhic dance, and
fearlessly attack any number of cats, absolutely running after them and
nipping the ends of their tails; which malicious act she always
supplemented with a loud burst of laughter. She was as thievish as the
“Gazza Ladra” herself, and equal to getting ten servants hung on false
accusations. In the twinkling of an eye she would rifle every knife,
fork, and spoon from the table. Money, scissors, thimbles, anything that
glittered, she would seize upon and swiftly fly away with to her hiding
place. As the corner where she deposited her stolen goods was well known
to us all, we allowed her to do this; but the servants of a neighboring
family were less indulgent, and they killed her one day because, as they
stated, she had stolen a pair of new sheets,—an accusation which made us
think of that minute cat in “How to succeed,” which devoured four pounds
of butter and only weighed three quarters of a pound after it! The
master and mistress of the house scouted the idea, and turned the fools
of servants off at once; but this reprisal did not mend the matter, Dame
Margot’s neck was none the less wrung. She was lamented by all the
neighborhood, which had been kept in a state of constant diversion by
her good humor and her pranks.