Do chameleons change their color according to the place where they happen to be? In the literal sense of the words they do not, but their skins, broken by little facet-shaped roughnesses, absorb the hues of surrounding objects more easily than other bodies do. Placed near a red thing, or a yellow or a green one, the chameleon seems to steep itself in that color, but, after all, it is but an effect of refraction. A plate of polished metal will be colored in the same way; there is no real power of absorption. In its ordinary state the chameleon is of a gray-green or a yellowish gray. However, those who have a taste for marvels may, if they like, assert that the chameleon changes its color at will, and is thus the proper emblem of political versatility; but we must be permitted to say in our turn that after the minutest observations, continued for a long time, we are convinced that chameleons are entirely indifferent to affairs of state and everything connected with them.
We were anxious to carry our chameleons home with us, but the autumn was near at hand, and, though the sun still had a great deal of heat as we followed the coast northward from Tarifa to Port Vendres, passing by Gibraltar, Malaga, Alicante, Almeria, Valencia, and Barcelona, the poor beasts faded away before our very sight. As they wasted, their eyes seemed to project from their heads, and day by day to increase in prominence. Their squint increased; under their loose and flabby skins their tiny skeletons grew more and more distinct with every mile. It was a piteous sight,—these consumptive lizards feebly going through the death dance, and too weak even to thrust their sticky tongues out for the flies which we collected for them in the galley of the steamer. They died within a few days of each other, and the blue Mediterranean was their grave.
From chameleons to lizards the transition is easy. Our youngest daughter once received the present of a lizard which had been caught at Fontainebleau, and which became very fond of her. Jacques’ color was the most beautiful Veronese green that can be imagined. His eyes were very bright, his scales overlapped each other with the most perfect regularity, and his movements were extraordinarily swift. He never left his little mistress, and usually lay hidden in a loop of her hair near the comb. Nestled there, he accompanied her to the play, to walk, to evening parties, without once betraying his presence; only, when the young girl was playing on the piano, he would desert his retreat, descend her shoulder and creep out to the end of the arm, always preferring the right hand, which plays the air, to the left, which makes the accompaniment,—thus testifying to his preference for melody over harmony.
Jacques’ house was a glass box lined with moss, which had once contained Russian cigars from the Eliseïeph manufactory. His private life may therefore be justly said to have lain open to the public. His food consisted of drops of milk, which he preferred to take from the end of his mistress’s finger. He died of grief and hunger during her absence on a journey, to which she had not dared to expose him on account of the severity of the weather.
There is nothing to be told of Balylas, the sparrow, but that he died. One blow under his wing, from a claw, finished his career, and he was buried in a domino-box.
It now only remains for us to describe Margot, the magpie,—a most intelligent and chatty gossip, worthy to live in an osier cage in the window of a concierge and be fed with white cheese. We wasted much time in trying to teach her the dead languages. She never could be taught to pronounce correctly the Latin for “Bonjour,” as did the Pompeiian magpies. She could not say “Ave,” but she said a great many other things. She was a most comical and entertaining bird, who would play at hide-and-go-seek with the children, dance the Pyrrhic dance, and fearlessly attack any number of cats, absolutely running after them and nipping the ends of their tails; which malicious act she always supplemented with a loud burst of laughter. She was as thievish as the “Gazza Ladra” herself, and equal to getting ten servants hung on false accusations. In the twinkling of an eye she would rifle every knife, fork, and spoon from the table. Money, scissors, thimbles, anything that glittered, she would seize upon and swiftly fly away with to her hiding place. As the corner where she deposited her stolen goods was well known to us all, we allowed her to do this; but the servants of a neighboring family were less indulgent, and they killed her one day because, as they stated, she had stolen a pair of new sheets,—an accusation which made us think of that minute cat in “How to succeed,” which devoured four pounds of butter and only weighed three quarters of a pound after it! The master and mistress of the house scouted the idea, and turned the fools of servants off at once; but this reprisal did not mend the matter, Dame Margot’s neck was none the less wrung. She was lamented by all the neighborhood, which had been kept in a state of constant diversion by her good humor and her pranks.
CHAPTER VI.
HORSES.
Do not be in a hurry to accuse us of coxcombry on seeing the heading of this chapter. Horses!—a glorious word indeed for the pen of a literary man. Musa pedestris (the muse goes on foot), says Horace, and all Parnassus together had but a single horse in its stable,—the well known Pegasus; and he, if we may believe Schiller’s ballad, was a beast with wings, and not at all easy to harness. We are no sportsman, alas, and we deeply regret the fact, for we are as fond of horses as though we had an income of five hundred thousand francs a year, and entirely agree with the Arabs in their contempt for people who are forced to walk. A horse is the natural pedestal for a man, and the perfect existence is that of the Centaur,—that ingenious mythological invention.
However, notwithstanding that we are a simple man of letters, we once had horses. About the year 1843 or 1844, when engaged in sifting the sands of journalism through the sieve of the daily newspapers, enough golden particles appeared, to allow of the hope that, in addition to dogs, cats, and magpies, we might be able to find food for a couple of pets of larger size. At first it was a pair of Shetland ponies, about the size of a large dog, and shaggy as bears, who looked at us through their long, black manes with such friendly faces that we felt much more inclined to take them with us into the parlor than to send them to their stable. They helped themselves to sugar out of our pockets, just like trained horses. For use, however, they were entirely too small. They would have answered very well to carry an English child eight years old, or as coach horses to Tom Thumb; but, even at that date, we were blessed with the same athletic frame as now, and crowned with the same plenteous flesh which still characterizes us, and which we have been enabled to support, without giving way under its weight, for forty consecutive years. The difference in size between master and beasts was quite too apparent to the eye, though it must be said for the ponies that they made no difficulty at all about drawing their light phaeton, to which they were fastened by a tiny harness of pale fawn-colored leather, which looked as though it might have been purchased at a toy-shop.
At that time illustrated comic journals were not so plentiful as to-day, but there were plenty in existence to caricature us and our equipage. Of course, with the exaggeration permissible in such cases, we were invested with elephantine proportions, like those of Ganesa, the Indian god of wisdom, while the ponies dwindled to the size of puppies,—or, even less, to that of rats and mice. It is true that, without great difficulty, we might have carried the little creatures, one under each arm, and the phaeton to boot upon our back. For a moment we debated the possibility of harnessing four, but this Liliputian four-in-hand would have been still more conspicuous. With great regret therefore (for we had already grown fond of the gentle creatures) we exchanged them for a pair of dappled-gray ponies of a larger size, with strong necks, wide chests, and massive shoulders, which, though far enough from being Mecklenburgers, at least looked capable of drawing grown people about. They were mares,—one named Jane and the other Betsey.