“Kiang! Kiang! Kiang!”
But he remained motionless, like a bronze chimera, soaring far above us in his ecstasy.
On the morrow he was found dead in his kennel.
I have often thought since that he had some presentiment of his approaching death, and that he heard the distant baying of Sirius’s hounds—of those dogs, sons of heaven, who hunt the Bear, and through all eternity assuage their divine thirst in the fountains of the Milky Way.
Although the grimaces of the monkey may be amusing, the dog’s capacity for affection has won a higher place in my esteem. I am wrong; for if a poodle be very near to us by its heart and its delicacy of feeling, a monkey is more closely akin to humanity through its gestures and form. Darwin has written very cleverly on this subject. A baby of four years old, whom I took to the Corvi Theatre the other day, [p118] and who had not read Darwin, cried out, when the dishonest cook appeared:
“Look! it’s a little negro!”
You all know the popular performance of The Roman Orgie by Couture. Behind a table well provided with biscuits and nuts, a company of baboons, ourang-outangs, and brown monks is seated. They are dressed like Peruvian generals, and each has a napkin tucked into his collar. A poor little monkey, tricked out in a town-crier’s old clothes, with a white cap and apron, waits upon his comrades, gambolling round the table. In his right hand he holds a lighted candle; in the left a basket, which he dances by its handle. Ah! yes, that head cook! he dances it by the handle morally and materially.[6] You see, he is weighing his provisions on the sly, and seizing a mouthful whenever M. Corvi is not looking.
The same entertainment has gone on ever since our childhood, and since the infancy of your father and grandfather. And, as it would be difficult to believe that the head cook is a sexagenarian, we must conclude that a whole generation of actors have worn the apron and carried the candle without our remarking any change.
To satisfy myself on this point, I questioned M. Corvi himself on the subject.