Crawling on their bellies after the manner of serpents, these new reptiles came towards me. Karabouffi crawled at their head. Overwhelmed by fear, his enormous head had disappeared between his shoulders; his quickened breath swept over the ground; his body, far more considerable in its natural state than that of a tall man, was now nothing but a flattened and trembling trunk pressed against the earth. When he had reached my feet he licked them for more than a quarter of an hour; and this act of abasement over, he moved a little on one side to make room for others, who in their turn licked my feet as he had done. Not one of them was bold enough to render a similar act of homage to my hands. These abject proceedings of theirs confounded me with astonishment.
But what did it all mean? For surely this singular homage of which I had been the object must be open to some kind of explanation.
The explanation was this: that with my mandrill’s skin, my mandrill’s head, my mandrill’s breast, my mandrill’s hands and legs, I was taken—now you will guess it all—for the gigantic mandrill whom Vice-Admiral Campbell had suspected to be, and not, as we see, without reason, an old sovereign of Kouparou. Yes, I was taken for that same great mandrill who would have disembowelled Karabouffi had not Admiral Campbell knocked the monster over with a ball from his fowling-piece.
This fanatic veneration of theirs, instead of diminishing, only increased. It became a universal sentiment. An Indian god is not more adored by his superstitious worshippers than I was by these grovelling apes. I might have walked, stamping on this living carpet, without even a skin daring to move.
I was, then, saved? Without doubt; but I was also become an ape. More than that! I was unquestionably recognised as king by all the apes of Kouparou. And how had all this been brought about? Why, in precisely the same way that other sovereigns had raised themselves to power—by firing a few guns, by losing my head, and by disguising myself in the garments of an illustrious predecessor.
Since it was so, and since it was necessary either to “perish or reign,” as they say, I believe, in tragedies, and in actual life as well, I resigned myself to reign, although my people appeared very ugly-looking in my eyes. But I had no choice.
This resolution being taken, I generously extended my paw to my predecessor Karabouffi, whom I raised by this dignified movement, easily comprehended, to the high rank of prime minister.
This first act of authority exercised by me prodigiously astonished all around; but I perceived that on the whole it gave great satisfaction. My good sense, then, had not deceived me. I had always said to myself, and that long before a nation of apes had placed the sceptre in my hands, that it was bad policy on the part of a minister to torment, abase, and punish those whom he was called upon to aid in governing, since if he should act thus, if he should listen to the inspirations of hate, or to counsels bewildered by fear, he is certain to create for himself secret and implacable enemies, critics ever ready to condemn all his actions, who are so much the more to be feared since they foment discontent among the people, who, while regretting the loss of that liberty which they no longer possess, will indulge in the hope that one day it may again be theirs.
And how very difficult, if not impossible, is rendered the return to power of those who have been overthrown if they are only left where they have fallen! An open tolerance which will only lower them still more is preferable to raising them up by a marked display of aversion, or by a colouring of persecution, no matter how faint.
I exercised, then, no severity against Karabouffi, who, it must be remembered, had had the generosity, when I was entirely in his power, not to flay me alive from head to foot.