THE PROFESSOR AND THE CROCODILE.
THE PROFESSOR AND THE CROCODILE.
A CHAPTER FROM AN UNPUBLISHED NATURAL (AND SUPERNATURAL) HISTORY.
Our title resembles that of a fable, but the story we are about to relate bears internal evidence of its truth.
The town of Weisstadt, in Germany, is full of philosophers, mathematicians, and savants of all kinds. On entering the place, the traveller is at once struck by the physiognomies of the inhabitants: all the faces are more or less like geometrical figures.
Herr Dummkopf, one of the innumerable professors who adorn Weisstadt, was rich though learned; nevertheless, something was wanting to complete his happiness. Every morning when he rose he addressed to himself the following remark:—“Why did the traveller Bruce never discover the peninsula of Meroë, which Herodotus saw as plainly as he saw the moon?” This thought at last absorbed him so completely, that he could not refrain from packing up his shirt and starting at once for Egypt. He passed through France, crossed the Mediterranean without observing anything, so thoroughly occupied was he with the non-discovery of the supposed peninsula. After remaining a few hours at Cairo, he pursued his journey to the ruins of Carnac. He bestowed a careless glance on the Colossus of Memnon, the crypts of Osimandias, the obelisks of Luxor, and all the wonders of Egyptian Thebes; and as he continued to ascend the Nile, he saw Latopolis, Elethyd, Apollinopolis, and Syene. The ruins of these ancient towns were not honoured by a single mark of admiration: it was humiliating for the Egypt of Sesostris!
One day the sun was so hot at noon—a very natural thing in the torrid zone—that the learned Dummkopf allowed himself to be seduced by the cool aspect of the Nile, and determined to make an era in his scientific life by taking a bath in the sacred stream.
He looked around him. The desert was indeed worthy of its name. There was not even a statue of Isis, of Ibis, of Anubis, or of Serapis to be seen. The Nile flowed on in religious silence, and Dummkopf, reassured by the solitude which reigned around, hastened to take off his boots and clothes, and after arranging them carefully on the bank, plunged into the eternal river.
Dummkopf was grateful to Mother Nature for having placed a cool refreshing stream by the side of a burning desert. As a boy he had been in the habit of swimming in the Rhine of his fatherland, and now remembering the accomplishments of his youth, he struck out, turned over, floated on his back, dived, paddled like a dog, plunged like a porpoise, and again thanked Mother Nature for having, in her bountiful wisdom, placed a cool refreshing stream by the side of a burning desert. He was continuing to disport himself like a freshwater Triton when suddenly, close to him, and in the middle of the Nile, he saw a huge green snout, adorned with lion’s teeth, and lighted up with a pair of blood-red eyes.
Dummkopf instantly remembered that the Nile was fertile in crocodiles, and began to chide his memory for not having thought of that fact before.
In the meanwhile the monster was bearing down on the imprudent bather, who, though thin, by reason of excessive study, was at the same time a very acceptable meal for a hungry crocodile.
For it was indeed a crocodile, and of the finest kind; a colossal and amphibious lizard, more ferocious than the tiger of Bengal or the lion of the Atlas.
Dummkopf made straight for a little island—the terror of navigators and the salvation of swimmers. He had almost reached his place of refuge—with the crocodile so close on his heels that he could feel its warm breath on the soles of his feet—when he remembered that the monster was amphibious. Another man would have been paralysed by this reflection. Not so Dummkopf. He looked before him, and seeing a friendly palm-tree within reach—it was the solitary ornament of the little islet—he ran to it, took a spring, and climbed up its branches with the agility of a squirrel.
Having perched himself in safety near the summit, the learned Professor looked down upon the Nile. The crocodile was issuing slowly from the water, shaking, as he did so, his coat of glittering scale-armour He then walked along the sand like a fish that had suddenly become a quadruped, and gradually approached the foot of the palm-tree.
Dummkopf ransacked his memory for all he had ever read about crocodiles, with the view of ascertaining whether Pliny or any other natural historian of celebrity had ever stated that they were able to climb up palm-trees.
It appeared to him that both Pliny and Saavers had testified to the climbing capabilities of the crocodile.
“Oh, Philosophy!” he mentally exclaimed, “grant that my brethren, who make mistakes in every page, may also have erred on this point.”
Suddenly he remembered with a shudder that he himself had written an article in the Weisstadt Review in which he maintained that crocodiles were in the habit of climbing up trees like cats. He wished now that he had thrown the article into the fire; but it was too late. All Weisstadt had read it. It had even been translated into Arabian, and no author had yet contradicted it, although it had penetrated to Crocodilopolis itself.
The amphibious monster approached the palm-tree, looked up, and evinced the most lively joy at discovering Dummkopf among the branches. It walked round and round, looked up again, and then, recognising the impossibility of taking the stronghold by assault, sat down, as if determined to reduce it by blockade.
Here we must render homage to true science. Dummkopf, in spite of the preoccupation of the moment, was filled with regret when he found that, contrary to what he had stated in the Weisstadt Review, crocodiles did not climb trees. He saw that he had committed a gross error in Natural History, but he at the same time made up his mind never to correct it, if, by a miracle, he escaped from his present perilous position. He made the statement with a full conviction of its truth, and it added one more fact to Natural History. Crocodiles climbed up palm-trees. It was impossible to deny it now, even after sitting on a palm-tree up which a crocodile had been unable to climb. The conclusions of science must not rashly be interfered with.
In the meanwhile, the crocodile lay stretched out at the foot of the palm-tree, in calm anticipation of Dummkopf’s inevitable descent. From time to time the animal testified, by the wagging of its tail, to the pleasure it experienced in looking forward to that incident.
The naturalist, to do him justice, did not lose the opportunity of studying the habits and manners of the Egyptian crocodile, but having reviewed the animal in a scientific spirit, he again trembled for his life, for it was now evident that the blockade was to be kept up in earnest.
Hours of suspense and of imprisonment consist of 240 minutes each, but they come to an end at last. Time sometimes goes on crutches, but it proceeds nevertheless. The sun went down as on the previous evening, and after a very short period of dusk the last rays of departing daylight exhibited the crocodile lying at the foot of the palm-tree, placid and horizontal.
The Professor now searched in the storehouse of his memory for some instance of a man who had passed the night on the top of a palm-tree. After going through the whole of ancient and modern history, he commenced the department of travels, and suddenly bethought him of Robinson Crusoe, which, though not usually accepted as a book of travels, is far more truthful than the great majority of works of that class. Now, Robinson Crusoe passed the first night after his shipwreck in a tree, and this tree was in all probability a palm-tree. “Why, then,” said Herr Dummkopf, “should I not do the same?”
And still fortifying himself with the example of Robinson Crusoe, the Professor drew some of the smaller branches around him, and composed himself to sleep.
But the night was long, and Dummkopf slept but little. He dreamed that he was at Weisstadt, delivering a lecture which proved that the crocodile was a fabulous animal like the Sphinx, when suddenly a shower of crocodile’s tears fell on his face. He awoke with a start, and was very near falling down on to the tail of his besieger.
The crocodile was now, in all probability, fast asleep, and Dummkopf resolved to play him a trick. “If,” said the Professor, “I could slip down the tree, and swim across the Nile without its hearing me, it would be nicely caught when it awoke in the morning and found me gone.” But having reflected that he might be caught himself, he abandoned this desperate project, and merely resolved not to go to sleep again that night.
When day broke the Professor saw that the crocodile had not been idle during the night. Instead of sleeping he had been fishing on the banks of the Nile, and the bones with which the ground was strewed showed that he had not fished in vain. The monster had now had his first course, and he looked upwards towards his intended victim as if to say that he was quite ready for the second.
The Professor had certainly a terrible future before him. The contest between the besieger and the besieged was by no means equal, for the former could find as much food as he required in the waters of the adjacent Nile, while the latter saw no prospect of obtaining the slightest nourishment, and would in all probability either die from starvation or fall fainting into the jaws of his voracious assailant.
In the meanwhile Dummkopf’s stomach, a machine which in some respects is quite independent of the brain, began to murmur loudly, for it had been deprived of two meals—the supper of the previous evening and the morning’s breakfast.
Among a great many other things of which the learned Professor was ignorant, he did not know that palm-trees produced dates, a rich pulpy fruit on which the Arabs have contrived to live very well since the time of Adam, the first colonist of Arabia. However, a short time after sunrise a ray chanced to fall upon a large bunch of these valuable articles of food, which the Professor at once recognised from having seen them in the grocers’ shops of his fatherland. In Germany he had been in the habit of breakfasting on beef and sausages, supported by several slices of bread, and washed down by several glasses of wine. But in the desert he was obliged to content himself with whatever manna he could get, and to be thankful, moreover, that Providence had sent him any. He ate dates by the handful, and felt much strengthened by his repast.
After breakfast a strange and superstitious idea occurred to the Professor. He had read somewhere that crocodiles were the natural avengers of all the insults offered to Egypt by barbarian travellers. It appeared to him that there was some sense in this, for if crocodiles didn’t serve to avenge something or other he was convinced they could serve no purpose at all. Then he reflected that he had passed without notice the statue of Memnon, the colossal tenor who had just commenced his morning cavatina under the influence of the sun’s rays. The divine Osimandias and the Pharaohs, as represented by the sublime pyramids, had been treated with similar disrespect; and the Professor now repented his irreverence, and vowed to kiss the big toe of Memnon, the tallest tenor in the world, if he only escaped his present danger.
After this vow the illustrious Dummkopf became more tranquil. He looked down at the crocodile, but the vow had produced no effect upon him. He did not even seem to have heard it. There he was still, watching patiently for his prey.
Dummkopf was now dying for a mouthful of cold water. Dates possess the property of producing thirst. Hence they are very desirable at dessert if the host wishes his guests to pass the bottle freely, but not otherwise. For a professor at the top of a palm-tree from which he is unable to descend, they form the most unsuitable food that can be conceived; but Herr Dummkopf had no choice—he had either to eat dates or to die of inanition. He was like Tantalus: the river was flowing at his feet, and he was unable to get a drop of water wherewith to moisten his parched lips. He again compared his position with that of Robinson Crusoe, and found that all the advantage was on the side of the latter. It was true Robinson Crusoe passed a night on a tree, but he came down the next morning, killed parrots, made them into fricasseed fowl, drank rum and water, walked about with an umbrella over his head, met no crocodiles, and found a man Friday. “Happy Robinson Crusoe!” exclaimed Dummkopf; “and yet he complained. I should like to know what he’d have done in my place, on the top of a palm-tree.”
Suddenly the sky became overcast, and the Professor was filled with a joyful anticipation of rain. He had already joined his hands so as to form as large a receptacle as possible for the drops, and was promising himself a regular aquatic orgie, when all at once he remembered that in Egypt it never rains.
The crocodile seemed to understand the sufferings of the Weisstadt Tantalus. He walked to the edge of the river and swallowed several quarts of water, at the same time casting ironical glances at the unfortunate Professor. The pleasantry of masters is always intolerable. Dummkopf was disgusted and enraged; but this only increased his thirst.
He cast his eyes along the Nile, in hopes of discovering some providential sail. But then he remembered that in that part of the river, above the rapids, there was scarcely a chance of meeting with a boat of any kind. A death-like solitude reigned around, and nothing was to be seen but dark ruins, among which an occasional ibis, motionless, like a mark of admiration, was perched.
Again the Professor turned his thoughts towards Robinson Crusoe. “Certainly,” he said to himself, “if Crusoe had been in my position, at the top of a palm-tree, he would somehow or other have found means to obtain a drop of water. Come now, how would he have done it?”
Dummkopf’s mouth was on fire, and there was the great Nile rolling calmly and majestically before him.
At last Necessity, who is known to be the mother of Invention, brought her ingenious child to his aid.
The Professor clapped his hands. He had discovered an hydraulic process which would enable him to appease his thirst. How little is required to give joy to poor humankind! Here is a man on a palm-tree—a dying man who cannot escape from the jaws of a crocodile—and because he has discovered a very equivocal means of obtaining a few drops of brackish water with which to moisten his parched lips, he is convulsed with delight.
Dummkopf was proud of competing with Defoe’s hero, and set to work without delay. He began by breaking off from his palm-tree several long branches, which he spliced together by means of fibres. He then waited until the crocodile entered the water for a few minutes—by way of keeping up its character as an amphibious animal—and extended his apparatus towards the river. The leaves at the extremity of the machine imbibed a considerable quantity of water, and the Professor, drawing back his improvised pump, refreshed his calcined lips by means of the saturated foliage. He repeated the experiment several times, and, in fact, gave himself up to all the excesses of intemperance. This was an ingenious device, for which Tantalus would have given his eyes!
But, above all, Dummkopf was amused at the notion of mystifying his crocodile, who, as for that, richly deserved it.
Having no longer any anxiety as to the means of satisfying the two chief wants of existence—hunger and thirst—the Professor now began to think how he should manage for his clothes. His aboriginal costume was admirably suited to a tropical climate during the day, but remembering that during the night he had felt rather chilly, he resolved to make himself without delay a garment of green leaves. Besides, how was he to appear before the public without clothes, if by chance a boat should present itself?
Dummkopf accordingly gathered in his aërial alcove a certain quantity of the largest leaves he could find, and crossing his legs like a tailor, proceeded to make them into a vegetable paletôt, which could not be said to belong to the latest fashion, but which, on the other hand, had a primitive cut about it that was highly picturesque. Two leaves sufficed for the nightcap, which, original or not as its appearance may have been, at all events looked much better than the hats we wear in open day.
Here was Dummkopf now lodged, fed, and clothed at the expense of Nature. Happiness is altogether relative; and, for a time, Dummkopf was happy indeed. He was proud of his inventions, and from the height of his palm-tree looked down upon Robinson Crusoe with contempt.
As he was reflecting calmly on his happiness he saw the monster, no longer horizontal, at the foot of the tree. He was making one last endeavour to take it by storm, but failing in the attempt had forthwith recourse to sapping and mining. He went to work with the air of a crocodile who had made up his mind, and who had said to himself, “There must be an end to this.”
Dummkopf shuddered as he heard the teeth of the monster grinding against the bark of the tree.
But the molars and incisors of the crocodile are so arranged that they can do no serious harm to the palm-tree; they can tear the bark off, but cannot pierce or crush the trunk. Dummkopf, however, was ignorant of this fact, and expected every minute that his asylum would fall to the ground, and leave him a prey to the horrid monster into whose scaly body he would enter as into a tomb of shell, but without the smallest epitaph to inform the world of the numerous virtues he possessed.
The crocodile next attacked the tree with his tail as with a battering-ram. How the Professor quivered when the tree shook! And the worst of it was, that, independently of the most terrible result that could possibly take place, there was the certainty that the Professor would lose a large portion if not the whole of his provisions, unless the monster desisted from his sanguinary assault; for with each blow from the crocodile’s tail down came a bunch of dates, and when, as often happened, the fruit fell on the animal’s back, his fury redoubled.
At last Dummkopf could stand it no longer. Convinced that life was not worth defending at such a cost, he resolved to throw himself from the top of the palm-tree in order to find repose in death. Full of this desperate idea he stood up, put aside the branches which might have kept him back at the edge of the precipice, and thrusting one foot resolutely forward kept the other firmly in its place. An honourable thought checked him on the very brink of the abyss. Dummkopf had no family, no wife, no children, no nephews; it was his duty then to remain in the world as the sole representative of the Dummkopfs. Man is ingenious, even in the midst of his despair. If he has a wife and children, he wants to live for their sake; if he is alone in the world, he will live for his own benefit.
Dummkopf was very grateful to himself after coming to this heroic resolution. He even called himself a coward for having entertained for an instant the idea of offering himself up as a sacrifice to the voracity of an amphibious monster.
As he was now determined not to die if he could by any means avoid it, the Professor began to consider whether it would be possible to enjoy, at the top of his palm-tree, that sort of happiness which a civilised man has a right to expect. The crocodile had expended all his force in vain. It was evident that the palm-tree was an impregnable fortress as far as his attacks were concerned. The climate was superb. At the foot of the house—that is to say, of the palm-tree—ran a magnificent river. Thanks to the hydraulic apparatus there could never be any want of water; and as for food, there were dates in abundance. The crocodile instead of being terrible was now only amusing, and as it was clearly proved that the palm-tree could suffer no injury from the monster’s wrath, the Professor, in his lively moments, sometimes went so far as to pelt him with date-stones.
Every morning when the sun rose, Dummkopf bent his ear towards the desert and listened to the cavatina of Memnon, the colossal tenor. Then after breakfast, if he was pleased with the crocodile, he threw him down a few rotten dates, and was amused to see how voraciously the monster devoured them. Between breakfast and dinner he read in the library of his memory, and studied the mysterious monuments by which he was surrounded. When a profound thought occurred to him, he took a stylus, formed out of a twig, and jotted it down on a leaf which served as papyrus. Then he read it over several times, and put it away in a place of safety.
There were no neighbours to watch his conduct, no journals to criticise his thoughts, no tax-gatherers to trouble him about overdue rates. He was as free as the air, and only wondered why the misanthropes of society did not imitate Simon Stylites or himself, and retire for the rest of their lives to the top of some column or palm-tree.
We must now leave our anchorite in his palm-tree, and proceed to the opposite bank of the Nile, where Herr von Thorigkeit, the celebrated botanist of Berlin, was engaged in a hopeless search after yellow lotuses. Herodotus, it is true, saw yellow lotuses, but then Herodotus possessed the peculiarity of seeing things that did not exist. At all events, since his time the yellow lotus has not been met with, and for that reason conscientious botanists are perpetually looking for it.
Herr von Thorigkeit, then, was searching for the yellow lotus, and he was accompanied by two Arabs armed with carbines.
There are some things, ordinary enough in themselves, which have an overpowering effect on the imagination when they are seen in the desert. What, for instance, would be the feelings of a traveller who should discover in the midst of the Sahara a neat little house with the words—“Reading room, admission one penny,” over the entrance? Von Thorigkeit was behaving naturally enough when he uttered a cry of dismay which resounded along the left bank of the Nile.
He had seen two boots, one proud and erect, the other bent down as if with fatigue. Dummkopf’s clothes had disappeared, carried away by the stream, or perhaps swallowed by some omnivorous crocodile, but there were the boots standing on a ledge of rock.
The legitimate dismay of the botanist will now be understood. He had seen two boots on the left bank of the Nile: one proud and erect, the other bent down as if with fatigue.
The faithful Arabs, who had never seen a pair of boots in their lives, became terrified with the terror of the botanist, and bravely fired at the wellingtons, which fell riddled with balls.
From the top of his palm-tree the Professor heard the report, and at first felt inclined to curse the troublesome individual who had come to disturb him in his solitude and meditation. But human weakness at last gained the day, and he resolved to make signals of distress to the three men whom he now perceived on the left bank of the Nile.
He broke off a long branch from the palm-tree, stripped it of its leaves everywhere but at the end, where he left a large tuft, and waved it vigorously above his head with one hand, while with the other he threw into the Nile a quantity of dates, the only projectiles at his command.
The botanist, who was surrounded by that silence which is known to aëronauts alone, turned round at the sound of the dates falling into the water, and this time experienced a surprise which was greater even than the former one. The apparition of the boots was forgotten: he saw a palm-tree with a lofty crest, which waved to and fro in the midst of a perfectly calm atmosphere! After the first shock, this discovery caused him infinite delight, and he would have given all the yellow lotuses in the world for this phenomenon of a palm-tree.
Von Thorigkeit opened his note-book and wrote in it the following lines: “In Upper Egypt there exists a kind of palm-tree, which possesses the peculiarities of the aloe; with this difference, however, that the stem of the aloe attains an elevation of twenty feet above the level of the soil, and remains motionless, while the palm-tree of Upper Egypt agitates the top of its stem vertically and with a movement of prodigious regularity. We have named this tree the Von Thorigkeit palm.”
Having written this, the botanist made a sketch of the palm-tree and showed it to the two Arabs, having no other public to exhibit it to. The children of the desert, with their lynx-like eyes, had just discovered a human form beneath the thick foliage of the island palm-tree, and they resorted to the most energetic gestures in order to make the botanist see it too. But Von Thorigkeit could think of nothing but the grandeur of his discovery and the beauty of his drawing. He paid no attention to the gestures of the Arabs, and thought only of the sensation that would be produced in the learned world by the Von Thorigkeit palm.
The two Arabs persisted in their pantomime, which said as plainly as possible: “Look there on that little island; there is a human being there up in the palm-tree; he is in danger; he is making signals, and we must go to his aid at once.”
Von Thorigkeit pulled out a pocket telescope, shrugging his shoulders at the same time with the air of a man who makes a concession merely from politeness, and looked carelessly towards the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree. He had now his third surprise within the hour—the last completely absorbing the two others. He had seen distinctly a human face, and even a German face, surrounded by leaves; and a human hand shaking a naked branch with a tuft of foliage at the end. He replaced his telescope in his pocket with regret, read his article again, cast another glance at his drawing, and after reflecting, like Brutus, whether he should destroy his two children or let them live, decided at length upon the latter course. “Well, so much the worse,” he said to himself: “what is written is written, and I shall not cut out a single word. Besides, as the aloe exists the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree might have existed, if Nature had only seen its utility; I see its utility, and I shall let it remain.”
This resolution having been taken, the three men held a council. The first thing to do was to find a boat, which, after two hours’ walking, they met with. It was a fishing vessel, and the botanist had only to hold out a piece of gold and to point to the river in order to make the fisherman understand what was required of him. He then pointed down the stream, and said, in a haughty voice, as if the fisherman was likely to understand him—
“The island of the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree!”
The pantomimic direction would have sufficed.
They descended the Nile. The island of the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree was soon visible; and, as they approached it, the Arabs, with their lynx-like eyes, manifested some uneasiness, and exchanged signs of intelligence. After a quarter of an hour’s rowing, doubt was no longer possible. They had really seen an enormous crocodile keeping watch beneath the palm-tree.
They imparted their discovery to the botanist, who now received his fourth surprise in the course of the day, and trembled with cold in a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. However, for the honour of his fatherland, the learned German endeavoured to conceal his alarm, which, it must be admitted, was natural enough on the part of a botanist, who was accustomed only to hunt for flowers, and who had nothing whatever to say to the amphibious monsters of the Nile.
The Arabs were talking quietly among themselves, like men accustomed to hunt crocodiles. They put fresh caps on the nipples of their guns, stood up firmly in the fore part of the boat, and told the fisherman to be careful with his oars.
The crocodile saw the boat approaching, but did not know whether it brought prey or peril to his shore. In the meanwhile he made ready either for defence or flight, according to the number and importance of the invaders. He lay stretched out at the edge of the river, as motionless as a crocodile in a museum; but he kept his mouth wide open, ready to swallow the first enemy who landed.
The two Arabs, who were thoroughly acquainted with the habits and manners of the animal, took aim, uttered a syllable at the same moment, and their two shots sounded as one. The bullets entered, at the only vulnerable spot, the open mouth, and went through the whole length of the crocodile’s body.
The monster shook his head with contortions so comic, that they called forth shouts of laughter from the first floor of the palm-tree. Then, casting forth a torrent of blood upon the sand, he closed his tearful eyes and moved no more.
Dummkopf arranged his vegetable costume the best way he could, looked for his gloves merely through habit, and not finding them, came down as he was. The Arabs, like all their race, were grave men, but their seriousness disappeared in the wildest laughter when they saw Dummkopf’s costume. The botanist himself, now reassured by the death of the crocodile, could scarcely restrain his hilarity; but he bit his lips, and after shaking hands with his fellow-countryman, begged him to communicate his adventures. Dummkopf commenced by requesting his learned friend to check the unbecoming mirth of the Arabs, who were threatened with the vengeance of the Prussian consul in case they did not instantly desist.
Then Von Thorigkeit in the most generous manner offered Dummkopf his paletôt, which Dummkopf naturally accepted, retiring for some minutes behind the palm-tree in order to change his clothes, as he expressed it, though he might have said to dress himself.
Having taken a solemn farewell of his palm-tree, Dummkopf got into the boat, taking with him the crocodile and the coat of leaves as reminiscences of his adventures, and also as corroborative proofs. These precious relics were destined for the “Neue Museum” at Berlin, and Herr von Thorigkeit, who was attached to the Berlin University, hastened to thank Herr Dummkopf in the name of the Prussian capital.
Dummkopf was equally courteous to the worthy botanist. He thanked him in the name of science for his discovery of the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree, which added another member to the already numerous family of palms. He even promised to write a notice in the Weisstadt Review, to prove that the palm-tree just discovered through the indefatigable zeal of Von Thorigkeit belonged to the same species as the aloe of Ceylon.
At the nearest village a complete Arab costume was procured for Dummkopf, who, with the honesty which always distinguishes true science, restored the paletôt to Von Thorigkeit.
The two friends returned to Germany together, and soon afterwards an article signed Dummkopf appeared in the Weisstadt Review, in which full justice was done to the labours of the intrepid botanist and traveller, Von Thorigkeit, who had discovered the Von Thorigkeit palm-tree at the risk of his life, and not until he had killed two black reptiles of the cobra capella species. The article was illustrated with a wood-cut, which represented the new tree agitating its tuft in the air.
Von Thorigkeit also did his duty, for as soon as he reached Berlin he made known to the world that Herr Dummkopf, who had ventured above the third cataract, had rectified the errors of all the previous maps, and that in the course of his expedition he had killed two crocodiles by means of electricity.
Those who have meditated on the nature of man will not be astonished to hear the end of this true story. Dummkopf is at present the proprietor of the Weisstadt Review. He is a lecturer in the Weisstadt University, and in addition to all this, he has a wife and six children. Well, in spite of the Review, in spite of the lectureship, in spite even of his wife and six children, Dummkopf, at certain moments, regrets the peaceful life he led in his aërial apartment at the top of the palm-tree.
Such is man! a being full of contradictions!
