After the gamekeeper had stood a good five minutes as if rooted to the spot, shaking his head as he looked after his master, he dashed the butt-end of his gun insolently on the ground, and said, half aloud—
“May I be cursed if I would not give one of my hands to be able to run after him, and say it was none of it true!”
“Why, mate,” exclaimed the bailiff, who had been a secret witness from behind the next bush of the whole scene, “what a strange fellow you are! It must have ended so sooner or later. At present the blow has fallen; the sorrow will pass away, and we have got rid of the confounded beasts. Think of all the annoyances which we, our wives, and our children have had to bear on their account.”
“He looked so happy as he came riding along.”
“Come, come,” observed the other pressingly, “let us go and see what the wounded are doing.”
So saying he left the spot, dragging with him the gamekeeper, now grown so tender-hearted.
It was not till late in the evening that the General returned to Windhausen. For three days he was visible to no one. On the fourth day he rode over, as was his wont, to Cassel, and, going to a sculptor’s, ordered for his favourites a funeral monument, according to the design he had himself made, and with the inscription he had himself drawn up. When completed the monument was erected over the common grave of all the monkeys, on that bank of the quiet lake which was opposite the mansion, and where there is a magnificent south-western prospect. It consists of a smooth, broken column, from seven to eight feet in height, placed upon a square pedestal, two feet in height. The inscription on the column is as follows:—
In this Place
There returned to the great mass of the primitive matters constituting
Human Beings, Representatives
Of a Race of Africans, long naturalised in these Meads,
After many Births.
Not Slavery,
The Lot of their Fellow-Countrymen, the Blacks,
But perfect Freedom,
Was theirs, and the Result:
Love for their Benefactor,
Who unfortunately at last,
In consequence of their being attacked by a fit of fury
As all were fighting for one,
Was compelled to sacrifice
His own pleasures to the general good.
It was decreed that Death
Should strike Sires and Sons, Grandfathers and Grandchildren,
Mothers and Babes.