bundle of hay. There it slept, week after week. A marmot in this condition is cold to the touch but not altogether stiff, and Professor Mangili calculated long ago that during the whole of its six months’ lethargy it respires only 71,000 times (awake, 72,000 times in two days)—a veritable death-in-life! Mine displayed no resentment at being aroused now and then in a warm room; indeed, it behaved with exemplary meekness and allowed itself to be pinched or caressed or carried about; but preferred sleeping, and always seemed to say, in the words of the poet’s sluggard, “You have waked me too soon! I must slumber again.” When summer came round, we took it back to its old home, where it trotted off without a word of thanks, as if the past experiences in our valley had been nothing but a silly dream.
One would hardly think that marmots ever fed each other, yet a skull in my collection makes me wonder how this particular animal, an old beast, can have survived without receiving nourishment from its fellows. It was shot near St. Gallenkirch in the Montavon valley on September 12th, 1886; and is remarkable since, in consequence of what looks like the fracture of a single incisor tooth, the lower jaw has been partially and slowly displaced, shifted to one side of the upper—at the cost, no doubt, of incessant pain. What happened? All four incisors therewith became not only useless but an intolerable hindrance; lacking the necessary attrition, they grew ever longer in mammoth-like curves, and sharply pointed; the shortest—the injured one, which is still deprived of enamel at its extremity—measures six and a half centimeters in length, the longest all but eight; and one of them, in the course of its circular development, has actually begun to bore into the bone of the upper jaw. I am not much of a draftsman, but these two sketches will suffice to give some idea of the freak specimen. A squirrel with somewhat similar dentition was described in the “Zoologist” (Vol. IX, p. 220). Here was one marmot, at least, who must have been glad when summer food-problems were over, and it grew cold enough to scuttle downstairs again for a six months’ rest. And some of them sleep in this fashion for eight months on end. What a sleep! Why wake up at all?
Food-problems of our own——
They are non-existent. This region has suffered relatively little from the effects of war; it is a self-supporting district of peasant-proprietors where nearly every family possesses its own house and orchard and fields and cattle; the ideal state of affairs. Nothing is lacking, save tobacco and coffee. To obtain the first, one plagues friends in England; instead of the second, we have to put up with cocoa, a costive and slimy abomination which I, at least, will not be able to endure much longer. Prolonged and confidential talks with the innkeeper’s wife—his third one, a lively woman from the Tyrol, full of fun and capability—have already laid down the broad lines of our bill of fare. I must devour all the old local specialties, to begin with, over and over again; items such as Tiroler Knödel and Saueres Nierle and Rahmschnitzel (veal, the lovely Austrian veal, is scarce just now, but she means to get it) and brook-trout blau gesotten and Hasenpfeffer and fresh oxtongue with that delicious brown onion sauce, and gebaitzter Rehschlegel (venison is cheap; three halfpence a pound, at the present rate of exchange); and, first and foremost, Kaiserfleisch, a dish which alone would repay the trouble of a journey to this country from the other end of the world, were traveling fifty times more vexatious than it is. Then: cucumber salad of the only true—i. e., non-Anglo-Saxon—variety, sprinkled with paprika; no soup without the traditional chives; beetroot with cummin-seed, and beans with Bohnenkraut (whatever that may be); also things like Kohlrabi and Kässpätzle—malodorous but succulent; above all, those ordinary, those quite ordinary, geröstete Kartoffeln with onions, one of the few methods by which the potato, the grossly overrated potato, that marvel of insipidity, can be made palatable. How comes it that other nations are unable to produce geröstete Kartoffeln? Is it a question of Schmalz? If so, the sooner they learn to make Schmalz, the better. Pommes lyonnaises are a miserable imitation, a caricature.
In the matter of sweets, we have arranged for Schmarrn with cranberry compote, and pancakes worthy of the name—that is, without a grain of flour in them, and Apfelstrudel and—quick! strawberries down from the hills, several pounds of the aromatic mountain ones, to form those wonderful open tarts which are brought in straight from the oven and eaten then and there, hot—if you know what is good. Should the weather grow sultry, I will also make a point of consuming a bowl of sour milk, just for the sake of auld lang syne. It may well ruin my stomach, which has acquired an alcoholic diathesis since those days.
There! A change of food, at last.
Whether Mr. R. will take to this diet is another matter. I should be in despair if he were a true Frenchman, for your Gaul, in this and other matters, is the most provincial creature in the world; like a peasant, he can eat nothing save what his grandmother has taught him to think eatable. Mr. R., luckily for him, is French only from political necessity. And besides, persons of his age should never be encouraged to express likes and dislikes in the matter of food; it is apt to make them capricious or even greedy, and what says the learned Dr. Isaac Watts, from whom I quoted a moment ago? “The appetite of taste is the first thing that gets the ascendant in our younger years, and a guard should be set upon it early.” How true! Nobody is entitled to be captious until he has reached the canonical age. After that, he has acquired the right of being not only critical, but as gluttonous as ever he pleases.
Here, meanwhile, are the latest statistics of our village. It contains about seven hundred inhabitants, three hundred cows and calves (most of them on the mountains just now), five taverns, and three Dorftrottels or idiots, of the genuine Alpine breed. Mr. R. is dying to have a look at them as soon as the weather clears; and so am I. There is a fascination about real idiots. They have all the glamour of a monkey-house, with an additional note of human pathos.