“What! snails? Is she weak in her chest? The j master I lived with before I came to your honour used to take snail broth because he had ‘phisics ‘; well, that did not stop...”

  I was out of the room before he got to the end of his story. Half-way down the stairs I found I had come away without a handkerchief, and returned to get one. I discovered Joseph, who had not heard me come into the room, posing as the Apollo Belvedere, one foot on: Gazelle’s back, the other poised in air, so that not a. grain of the ten stone the idiot weighed should be lost for the poor creature’s benefit.

  “What are you doing there, stupid?”

  “I told you so, did I not, Monsieur?” replied Joseph, full of pride at having, at least partially, proved his proposition.

  “Give me a pocket-handkerchief, and never again meddle with that animal.”

  “Here is it, Monsieur,” said Joseph, bringing me what I wanted. “But you need have no fears for her; a wagon might pass over her.”

  I ran away as fast as I could; but I had not got twenty steps down the stairs before I heard Joseph grumbling to himself as he shut the door, “Pardieu! As if I did not know what I was talking about. Besides that, it is obvious from the conformation of these animals that a cannon loaded with grapeshot could...”

  Fortunately, the noise of the street below prevented my hearing the end of his cursed nonsense. That night I came home pretty late, as my habit is. The first step I took in the room I felt something crunch under my boot. I raised one foot hastily, throwing my weight on the other; the same crunching was heard again. I thought I had walked into a row of hen’s nests. I lowered the candle to the floor. My carpet was covered with snails.

  Joseph had obeyed me to the letter. He had bought salad and snails, and had put tortoise and provender together into a basket in the middle of my room; ten minutes afterwards, either the heat of the room had roused the snails up or they had been seized with panic at the idea of being eaten alive, and the whole caravan had got on the march. Indeed, they had already done some considerable amount of travelling, as I could easily see by the silvery tracks left by the fugitives on the carpet and furniture.

  As for Gazelle, she was still in the basket, up the sides of which she had found it impossible to climb. But some empty snail shells showed me that the flight of the Israelites had not been sufficiently rapid to prevent her getting her teeth into one or two of them before they had time to cross the Red Sea.

  I at once began a careful inspection of the battalion which was manoeuvring in my room, as I did not much care about being subject to their attacks during the night; then, gently picking up all the stragglers with my right hand, I placed them one by one in their guardroom, the basket, which I held in my left hand, and shut the lid down on them. At the end of five minutes I began to perceive that if I left this menagerie in my room I ran the risk of-going without a wink of sleep; there was a sound as if a dozen mice had been tied up in a bag of walnuts. I therefore took steps to convey the whole party to the kitchen.

  On my way there I reflected that, at the rate Gazelle had been carrying on, if I left her in the midst of such a well-stocked larder I should find her dead in the morning from indigestion; at the same moment, as if by inspiration, there flashed across my mind’s eye the recollection of a certain trough in the back yard, which the restaurant keeper on the ground floor used for scouring his fish in. This seemed to me such a desirable lodging for a testudo aquarum dulcium that I thought it useless; to rack my brains to find another; so, taking Gazelle out of her dining-room, I bore her forthwith to her watery couch.

  I returned upstairs at once and fell asleep, persuaded that I was the cleverest man in France for finding a way; out of a difficulty.

  Next morning Joseph awoke me the moment it was; light.

  “Oh, Monsieur, here’s a pretty business!” he said, planting himself at my bedside.

  “What business?”

  “What your tortoise has done.”

  “What?”

  “Well, would you believe it? She got out of your room — I do not know how — walked down the three flights of stairs, out into the open air, and straight into the restaurant keeper’s fish-tank.”

  “Why you fool, could you not guess I put her there myself?”

  “Ah, well! Then you did a pretty piece of work.”

  “How so?”

  “How? Because she has eaten up a tench, a splendid tench, weighing three pounds.”

  “Go and fetch Gazelle, and bring me a pair of scales.”

  While Joseph was executing this order I went to my library and opened my Buffon at the paragraph Turtles for I was anxious to know if this chelonia was a fish-eater, and I read as follows: —

  “The fresh-water turtle, testudo aquarum dulcium (that was Gazelle), especially prefers marshes and stagnant waters. When it gets into a river or pond it attacks, all sorts of fish indiscriminately, even the largest: it grips them below the belly in its jaws, wounding them severely, and when they are thus weakened through loss of blood it devours them with the greatest avidity, leaving nothing whatever of them but the bones, the heads, and their swimming bladders, which last sometimes float up to the surface of the water!”

  “The deuce!” said I; “the restaurant man has M. de Buffon on his side; what he says is quite possibly true.”

  I was thus engaged in meditation as to the probability of the accident which was said to have occurred, when Joseph returned, holding the accused in one hand and the scales in the other, “Do you see,” said Joseph, “this kind of animal eats a great deal to keep up its strength, especially fish, because the latter contains a great quantity of nourishment. Unless it did so, how could it bear, think you, to carry a cart on its back? See how strongly built sailors are in seaport towns; that is because they live on nothing but fish.” I interrupted Joseph’s harangue at this point. “How much did the tench weigh?”

  “Three pounds; the waiter asks nine francs for it.”

  “And you say Gazelle has eaten every morsel of it?”

  “She has left nothing but the bones, the head, and the bladder.”

  “That is it exactly! Monsieur de Buffon is a great naturalist.”

  “However,” I muttered to myself, “three pounds!

  ...That seems a little too much.”

  I put Gazelle in the scales. She only weighed two pounds and a half, shell and all.

  The result of the experiment then was, not that Gazelle was innocent of the criminal charge, but that she had committed the offence on a fish of less than the alleged size.

  This seemed likewise to be the opinion of the cookshop waiter; as he seemed very well pleased with the five francs I gave him in satisfaction of his claim., adventure with the snails and the accident to the tench had made me somewhat less enthusiastic about

  my new purchase; and as I happened to meet the same day one of my friends, a great savant and a talented! artist, who was then engaged in turning his studio into a menagerie, I promised him that I would, the next day, augment his collection by the addition of a fresh object, belonging to the highly renowned family of the chelonice, at which he seemed greatly delighted.

  Gazelle passed the night in my room, where, in the absence of the snails, she slept tranquilly.

  In the morning, Joseph came in, as usual, gathered up the carpet strip by my bedside, opened the window, and began shaking out the dust; but, all of a sudden, he gave a cry of terror and craned his head so far out of window I really thought he was going to throw himself down.

  “What is the matter, Joseph?” I asked, still only half awake.

  “Alas! Monsieur, it is... your tortoise was asleep on the carpet. I did not notice her...”

  “Yes, and...?”

  “And, my word! without doing it on purpose, I’ll have shaken her out of window.”

  “You idiot, you!”

  I jumped out of bed.

  “But there,” said Joseph, whose face and voice were! beginning to resume an expression of serenity, which! was quite reassuring, “there she is, eating cabbage.”

  As a matter of fact, the creature, which had instinctively withdrawn inside its cuirass, had fallen by good luck on to a heap of oyster shells. This had broken its fall, and finding a head of cabbage conveniently within its reach, it had set to work on its breakfast as quietly as if a fall from the third floor were just an everyday incident in its life.

  “I told you so, Monsieur!” reiterated Joseph in the joy of his heart. “I told you so; nothing can hurt these animals. Why, look you, while she’s eating, if a carriage were to drive over her...”

  “Never mind that; go down at once and fetch her up.”

  Joseph obeyed orders. Meantime I dressed, and was ready before Joseph reappeared. Accordingly I went down to find him, and discovered him standing in the middle of an interested audience, to whom he was holding forth on the events of the morning.

  I took Gazelle out of his hands, jumped into a cab, and drove to No. 109, Faubourg Saint-Denis; then, after mounting to the fifth floor, I entered my friend’s studio, and found him busy at his easel.

  Grouped about him were a bear, lying on its back and playing with a cork; a monkey seated in a chair, pulling out the hairs of a paint-brush one by one; in a big glass jar a frog seated on the third rung of a miniature ladder, which she could use for the purpose of climbing to the surface of the water when she so pleased.

  My friend’s name was Decamps, the bear’s Tom, the monkey’s James the First, and the frog’s Mademoiselle Camargo.

  CHAPTER II

  RELATES HOW JAMES THE FIRST CONCEIVED A VIOLENT DISLIKE TO TOM, ALL ON ACCOUNT OF A CARROT

  My entrance produced a profound sensation.

  Decamps raised his eyes from that marvellous little picture of his, “Performing Dogs,” which you all know so well, and which he was then giving the finishing touches to.

  Tom let the cork he was playing with fall on his nose, and ran away growling to his kennel, which stood! between the two windows.

  James the First incontinently tossed the brush he was! tearing to pieces behind his back, and picked up a straw,! which he carried to his mouth with one hand, while he scratched his left leg with the other, raising his eyes with! a pious look of injured innocence to heaven.

  Last of all, Mademoiselle Camargo slowly climbed! one step higher on her ladder: a feat which, under any I ordinary circumstances, would have been considered! as a sign of coming rain.

  As for myself; I put Gazelle down at the door of the room, and came to a standstill on the threshold, saying, “Here’s the creature I spoke of, my boy. You see I stick to my word.”

  Gazelle was not at home for a moment or two; the motion of the cab had so upset her ideas of locality that probably with a view to collecting her faculties and reflecting on her situation during her travels, she had withdrawn entirely within her house. Thus what j placed upon the floor looked like nothing in the world but an empty shell. Nevertheless, when Gazelle felt by the correct position of her centre of gravity, that she

  had a solid resting place below her, she tentatively began to show her nose through the upper window of her dwelling. For prudential reasons, doubtless, this portion of her body was accompanied by the advance of her two forepaws; and, at the same time, as if all her members had been worked by a concealed spring, her two hind paws and tail appeared at the further extremity of the shell. Five minutes afterwards Gazelle had all sail set.

  But she remained inactive yet a little longer, waving her head from side to side, as if trying to make certain of her course; then suddenly her eyes became riveted on her mark, and she dashed forward, as swiftly as if she were running the race against La Fontaine’s hare, towards a carrot lying under the chair which served as a pedestal for James the First.

  Just at first the latter contemplated the advance of the new arrival in his direction with comparative indifference; but directly he comprehended the apparent object of her quest, he gave signs of genuine disquietude, which he showed by a low grumbling, degenerating, as fast as she gained ground towards him, into piercing yells alternating with violent gnashing of his teeth. At last, by the time she had got to little more than a foot’s distance from the precious vegetable, James’s agitation had changed to downright despair; with one hand he grasped the back of the chair, with the other the straw-covered cross bar, and, probably hoping he might scare away this new parasite which was coming to devour his dinner, he shook the chair with all the strength of his wrists, throwing his two hind feet back like a Kicking horse, and accompanying these antics with every gesture and grimace which he thought likely to disturb the automatic impassibility of his enemy. But all was useless; Gazelle did not slacken her speed by a single inch for anything he could do. James the First knew not to what Saint he could turn for succour.

  Happily for James an unexpected ally appeared at last moment. Tom, who had withdrawn to his lair my arrival, had at last become used to my presence, and was paying, like the rest of the company, a good deal of attention to the scene enacting before our eyes.” Astonished at first at the sight of this unknown animal, which, thanks to me, had become a fellow-lodger of his, and its new activity, he had followed its career towards the carrot with ever-increasing curiosity. Moreover, as Tom, too, was by no means indifferent to carrots, when he saw Gazelle had almost reached the precious morsel, he took three steps forward at a trot, and raising his great paw brought it heavily down on the back of the unhappy intruder. The flat of her shell struck the ground heavily, and she instantly shut herself up inside and remained motionless, only two inches distant I from the comestible which for the moment had become the goal of a triple ambition.

  Tom seemed much surprised at seeing how head, legs, and tail had disappeared as if by magic. He brought his nose close to the creature’s shell, sniffed j noisily at the apertures in it, and finally, the more perfectly to study the organization of the singular object before him, took it up, and turned it over and over between his paws. Then, as if convinced that he must have been the victim of an illusion when hp conceived the absurd notion that a thing like that was endowed with life and the power of motion, he dropped it carelessly down, took up the carrot in his mouth, and set out on his return to his kennel.

  But this action of his did not at all suit James. He had never suspected that the good service his friend Tom had done him was to be spoilt by such a display of selfish egoism. But, as he had not the same respect for his comrade as he felt for the stranger, he sprang like lightning from the chair, on which he had remained from prudential motives during the scene we have just described, and seized with one hand the carrot by its green top, while Tom held on to it by the root. He nerved himself for the combat with all his strength, grimacing, swearing, chattering with his teeth, while; with his free hand he delivered a series of heavy blows on the nose of his placid antagonist, who, without returning the blows, yet at the same time without ever letting go his hold on the subject of litigation, merely laid back his ears and closed his little black-eyes as each blow from the agile hand of James fell on his fat countenance. In the end the victory fell, as usually happens, not to the stronger, but to the more daring. Tom relaxed his clenched teeth, and James, the happy possessor of the coveted carrot, dashed up a ladder, carrying off the spoils of combat, which he proceeded to hide behind a plaster cast of Malagutti, which stood on a shelf six feet above the ground. This operation completed, he came quietly down again, certain in his own mind that neither bear nor tortoise could get it out of its hiding place.

  As he reached the last rung, when it became a question of stepping on to the floor, he made a judicious halt, and, casting a glance at Gazelle, whom in the heat of his dispute with Tom he had quite forgotten, he found she was in a position which positively invited attack.

  The fact was that Tom, instead of carefully replacing her in the position whence he originally took her, had, as stated, just let her drop casually out of his paws to alight where she might, so that the unfortunate beast, on recovering her senses, instead of being in her normal position on her belly, came to herself on her back, an attitude which, as every one knows, is in the highest degree antipathetic to every individual of the cheladonian race.

  It was easy to see from the confident air which James bore in approaching Gazelle that he had instantly concluded that the accident had placed it beyond her power to offer any resistance. Nevertheless, at the distance of some six inches from the monstrum horrendum, he stopped a moment, looked carefully into the aperture nearest to him, and then started, with an exaggerated air of extreme nonchalance, on a tour of inspection round the citadel, which he reconnoitred for all the world like a general examining the defences of a town he Proposes to attack. The survey completed, he stretched out one arm softly and felt one end of the shell with his finger-tips; then immediately, springing lightly backwards, without losing sight of the object on which his attention was engaged, he commenced a merry dance round on his hands and feet, accompanying the measure with a sort of song of triumph which it was his habit to indulge in, whenever, from a difficulty overcome or a peril braved, he saw reason to congratulate himself on his ability or courage.

  However, the song and dance were suddenly cut short; a new idea flashed across James’s brain, and appeared to absorb all his thinking faculties. He studied carefully the shape of the tortoise, to which the touch of his hand had imparted an oscillatory movement which the spherical shape of the carapace made more pronounced, and approached with a sidelong gait like a crab’s. Then, rising on his hind legs, he bestrode the shell as a rider does a horse, watched it a moment rocking between his legs, and finally, appearing completely reassured by the minute examination he had just made, he took a firm seat on his rocking-horse, giving a good shove off with his feet, which he kept close to the floor. Thus balanced, he swung merrily to and fro, scratching his sides and blinking his eyes, gestures which, to those who knew him, were the manifestations of ineffable delight.

 

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