But Mohammed, after giving his master a hearty kiss, still seems to be hesitating. Then Krall, to put him on the right track observes that the first letter of my name is the same as the first letter of his own. Mohammed strikes a K, evidently thinking of his master's name. At last, Krall draws a big M on the black-board, whereupon the horse, like one suddenly remembering a word which he could not think of, raps out, one after the other and without stopping, the letters M A Z R L K, which, stripped of useless vowels, represent the curious corruption which my name has undergone, since the morning, in a brain that is not a human brain. He is told that this is not correct. He seems to agree, gropes about a little and writes, M A R Z L E G K. Krall repeats my name and asks which is the first letter to be altered. The stallion marks an R.
"Good, but what letter will you put instead?"
Mohammed strikes an N.
"No, do be careful!"
He strikes a T.
"Very good, but in what place will the T come?"
"In the third," replies the horse; and the corrections continue until my patronomic comes out of its strange adventure almost unscathed.
And the spelling, the questioning, the sums, the problems are resumed and follow upon one another, as wonderful, as bewildering as before, but already a little dimmed by familiarity, like any other prolonged miracle. It is important, besides, to notice that the instances which I have given are not to be classed among the most remarkable feats of our magic horses. Today's is a good ordinary lesson, a respectable lesson, not illumined by flashes of genius. But in the presence of other witnesses the horses performed more startling exploits which broke down even more decisively the barrier, which is undoubtedly an imaginary one, between animal and human nature. One day, for instance, Zarif; the scamp of the party, suddenly stopped in the middle of his lesson. They asked him the reason.
"Because I am tired."
Another time, he answered: