They were roaming up and down, and gave this courtyard the appearance of the yard of a veterinary hospital. And this is where things took on a somber coloring. Of all those beasts very few seemed healthy. Most of them were wearing bandages—on the back, round the neck, on the back of the head, and more especially round the head. One hardly saw any of them through the grating, which did not wear a piece of white linen rolled up into a cap, hood or turban, and this procession of sorrowful dogs, with their absurd headdresses of linen bandages, and each with a label attached to its neck, was a most funereal sight to see.
Most of those poor wretches were smitten with some infirmity. One would fall on his muzzle at almost every step; another was limping; the head of a third was shaking and quivering like that of a palsied old man. A mastiff stumbled about, whining without apparent reason, and suddenly it would utter a loud death-like howl.
Nell was not there!
I perceived in a shady corner an aviary—silent and with no bird trying its flight. As far as I could make out, the occupants belonged to the commoner families of birds, and there were sparrows in great numbers. The greater portion of them, however, were a white-headed species, but I did not know enough of ornithology to recognize them from such a height.
The smell of carbolic came up to me.
Oh, for the scents of the farmyard, the cooing of pigeons on the moss-clad roofs, the cock’s cock-a-doodle-doo, the yelp of the dog tugging at its chain, the squadrons of geese with outspread wings! I kept thinking of you, in the presence of this lazar-house!
A sad farmyard, indeed, with its severe arrangement, and its patients ticketed like the plants in a hothouse.
Suddenly there was a bustling. The dogs went back to their kennels, and the poultry took refuge under a trough. Nothing budged again. The aviary and the cages seemed to contain nothing but stuffed beasts.
Karl, the German, with his Kaiser-like mustaches, had come out of the building on the left. He opened one of the compartments, thrust out his hand towards a ball of hair which was curled up in it, and drew out a monkey.
The animal, which was a chimpanzee, struggled. The assistant dragged it off, and disappeared with it by the way he had come. The mastiff gave a long howl.