To my faithful friend, the Public, who has listened to me for so long a period without disfavour, I owe a confession of the peculiar circumstances which, while not leading me altogether astray from history, have induced me to devote myself to the natural sciences.
The book which I now publish may be described as the offspring of the domestic circle and the home fireside. It is from our hours of rest, our afternoon conversations, our winter readings, our summer gossips, that this book, if it be a book, has been gradually evolved.
Two studious persons, naturally reunited after a day's toil, put together their gleanings, and refreshed their hearts by this closing evening feast.
Am I saying that we have had no other assistance? To make such a statement would be unjust, ungrateful. The domesticated swallows which lodged under our roof mingled in our conversation. The homely robin, fluttering around me, interjected his tender notes, and sometimes the nightingale suspended it by her solemn music.
The burden of the time, life, labour, the violent fluctuations of our era, the dispersion of a world of intelligence in which we lived, and to which nothing has succeeded, weighed heavily upon me. The arduous toils of history found occasional relaxation in friendly instruction. These pauses, however, are only periods of silence. Where shall we seek repose or moral invigoration, if not of nature?
The mighty eighteenth century, which included a thousand years of struggle, rested at its setting on the amiable and consoling, though scientifically feeble book of Bernardin de St. Pierre.[1] It ended with that pathetic speech of Ramond's: "So many irreparable losses lamented in the bosom of nature!"
We, whatever we had lost, asked of solitude something more than tears, something more than the dittany[2] which softens wounded hearts. We sought in it a panacea for continual progress, a draught from inexhaustible fountains, a new strength, and—wings.
This work, whatever its character, possesses at least the distinction of having entered upon life under the usual conditions of existence. It results from the intimate communion of two souls; and is in all things itself uniform and harmonious because the offspring of two different principles.
Of the two souls to which it owes its existence, one was the more powerfully attracted to natural studies by the fact that, in a certain sense, it had been born among them, and had ever preserved their fragrance and sweet savour. The other was so much the more strongly impelled towards them because it had always been separated by circumstances, and detained in the rugged ways of human history.
History never releases its slave. He who has once drunk of its sharp strong wine will drink thereof till his death. I could not wrench myself from it even in days of suffering. When the sorrows of the past blended with those of the present, and when on the ruins of our fortunes I inscribed "ninety-three," my health might fail, but not my soul, my will. All day I applied myself to this last duty, and pressed forward among the thorns. In the evening I listened—at first not without effort—to the peaceful narrative of some naturalist or traveller. I listened and I admired, unable as yet to console myself, or to escape from my thoughts, but, at all events, keeping them under control, and preventing any anxieties and any mental storms from disturbing this innocent tranquillity.
Not that I was insensible to the sublime legends of those heroic men whose labours and enterprise have so largely benefited humanity. The great national patriots whose history I was relating were the nearest of kindred to these cosmopolitan patriots, these citizens of the world.
For myself, I had long hailed, with all my heart, the great French Revolution which had occurred in the Natural Sciences—the era of Lamarck and of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,[3] so fertile in method, the mighty restorers of all science. With what happiness I traced their features in their legitimate sons—those ingenious children who have inherited their intellect!
At their head let me name the amiable and original author of the "Monde des Oiseaux,"[4] whom the world has long recognized as one of the most solid, if not also the most amusing, of naturalists. I shall refer to him more than once; but I hasten, on the threshold of my book, to pay this preliminary homage to a truly great observer, who, in all that concerns his own observations, is as weighty, as special, as Wilson or Audubon.
He has wronged himself by saying that, in his noble work, "he has only sought a pretext for a discourse on man." On the contrary, numerous pages demonstrate that, apart from all analogy, he has loved and studied the Bird for its own sake. And it is for this reason that he has surrounded it with so many legends, with such vivid and profound personifications. Each bird which Toussenel treats of is now, and will for ever remain, a person.
Nevertheless, the book now before the reader starts from a point of view which differs in all things from that of our illustrious master.
A point of view by no means contrary, yet symmetrically opposed, to his.
For I, as much as possible, seeking only the bird in the bird, avoid the human analogy. With the exception of two chapters, I have written as if only the bird existed, as if man had never been.
Man! we have already met with him sufficiently often in other places. Here, on the contrary, we have sought an alibi from the human world, from the profound solitude and desolation of ancient days.
Man could not have lived without the bird, which alone could save him from the insect and the reptile; but the bird had lived without man.
Man or no man, the eagle had reigned on his Alpine throne. The swallow would not the less have performed her yearly migration. The frigate bird,[5] unseen by human eyes, had still hovered over the lonely ocean-waters. Without waiting for human listeners, and with all the greater security, the nightingale had still chanted in the forest his sublime hymn. And for whom? For her whom he loves, for his offspring, for the woodlands, and, finally, for himself, his most fastidious auditor.
Another difference between this book and that of Toussenel's is, that, harmonious as he is, and a disciple of the gentle Fourier, he is not the less a sportsman. In every page the military calling of the Lorraine is clearly visible.
My book, on the contrary, is a book of peace, written specifically in hatred of sport.
Hunt the eagle and the lion, if you will; but do not hunt the weak.
The devout faith which we cherish at heart, and which we teach in these pages, is, that man will peaceably subdue the whole earth, when he shall gradually perceive that every adopted animal, accustomed to a domesticated life, or at least to that degree of friendship or neighbourliness of which its nature is capable, will be a hundred times more useful to him than if he had simply cut its throat.
Man will not be truly man—we return to this topic at the close of our volume—until he shall labour seriously to accomplish the mission which the earth expects of him:
The pacification and harmonious communion of all living nature.
"A woman's dreams!" you exclaim. What matters that?
Since a woman's heart breathes in this book, I see no reason to reject the reproach. We accept it as an eulogy. Patience and gentleness, tenderness and pity, and maternal warmth—these are the things which beget, preserve, develop a living creation.
May this, in due time, become not a book, but a reality! Then, haply, it shall prove suggestive, and others derive from it their inspiration.
The reader, au reste, will better understand the character of the work, if he will take the trouble to read the few pages which follow, and which I transcribe word for word. [The succeeding section, as the reader will perceive, is written by Madame Michelet.]
"I was born in the country, where I have passed two-thirds of my life-time. I feel myself constantly recalled to it, both by the charm of early habits, by natural sensibilities, and also, undoubtedly, by the dear memories of my father, who bred me among its shades, and was the object of my life's worship.
"Owing to my mother's illness, I was nursed for a considerable period by some honest peasants, who loved me as their own child. I was, in truth, their daughter; and my brothers, struck by my rustic ways, called me the Shepherdess.
"My father resided at no great distance from the town, in a very pleasant mansion, which he had purchased, built, and surrounded by plantations, in the hope that the charms of the spot might console his young wife for the sublime American nature she had recently quitted. The house, well exposed on the east and south, saw the morning sun rise on a vine-clad slope, and turn, before its meridian heats, towards the remote summits of the Pyrenees, which were visible in clear weather. The young elm-trees of our own France, mingled with American acacias, rose-laurels, and young cypresses, interrupted its full flood of light, and transmitted to us a softened radiance.
"On our right, a thicket of oaks, inclosed with a dense hedge, sheltered us from the north, and from the keen wind of the Cantal. Far away, on the left, swept the green meadows and the corn-fields. Through the broom, and in the shade of some tall trees, flowed a brooklet—a thin thread of limpid water, defined against the evening horizon by a small belt of haze which ran along its border.
"The climate is intermediate. In the valley, which is that of the Tarn, and which shares the mildness of the Garonne and the severity of Auvergne, we find none of those southern products common everywhere around Bordeaux. But the mulberry, and the melting perfumed peach, the juicy grape, the sugared fig, and the melon, growing in the open air, testify that we are in the south. Fruits superabounded with us; one portion of the estate was an immense vineyard.
"Memory vividly recalls to me all the charms of this locality, and its varied character. It was never otherwise than grave and melancholy in itself, and it impressed these feelings on all about it. My father, though lively and agreeable, was a man already aged, and of uncertain health. My mother, young, beautiful, austere, had the queenly bearing of the North American, with a prudence and an active economy very rare in Creoles. The estate which we occupied formerly belonged to a Protestant family, and after passing through many hands before it fell into ours, still retained the graves of its ancient owners—simple hillocks of turf, where the proscribed had enshrined their dead under a thick grove of oaks. I need hardly say, that these trees and these tombs, consecrated by their very oblivion, were religiously respected by my father. Each grave was marked out by rose-bushes, which his own hands had planted. These sweet odours, these bright blossoms, concealed the gloom of death, while suffering, nevertheless, something of its melancholy to remain. Thither, then, we were drawn, and as it were in spite of ourselves, at evening time. Overcome by emotion, we often mourned over the departed; and, at each falling star, exclaimed, 'It is a soul which passes!'[6]
"In this living country-side, among alternate joys and pains, I lived for ten years—from four to fourteen. I had no comrades. My sister, five years older than myself, was the companion of my mother when I was still but a little girl. My brothers, numerous enough to play among themselves without my help, often left me all alone in the hours of recreation. If they ran off to the fields, I could only follow them with my eyes. I passed, then, many solitary hours in wandering near the house, and in the long garden alleys. There I acquired, in spite of a natural vivacity, habits of contemplation. At the bottom of my dreams I began to feel the Infinite: I had glimpses of God, of the paternal divinity of nature, which regards with equal tenderness the blade of grass and the star. In this I found the chief source of consolation; nay, more, let me say, of happiness.
"Our abode would have offered to an observant mind a very agreeable field of study. All creatures under its benevolent protection seemed to find an asylum. We had a fine fish-pond near the house, but no dove-cot; for my parents could not endure the idea of dooming creatures to slavery whose life is all movement and freedom. Dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea-pigs, lived together in concord. The tame chickens, the pigeons, followed my mother everywhere, and fed from her hand. The sparrows built their nests among us; the swallows even brooded under our barns; they flew into our very chambers, and returned with each succeeding spring to the shelter of our roof.
"How often, too, have I found, in the goldfinches' nests torn from our cypress-trees by rude autumnal winds, fragments of my summer-robes buried in the sand! Beloved birds, which I then sheltered all unwittingly in a fold of my vestment, ye have to-day a surer shelter in my heart, but ye know it not!
"Our nightingales, less domesticated, wove their nests in the lonely hedge-rows; but, confident of a generous welcome, they came to our threshold a hundred times a-day, and besought from my mother, for themselves and their family, the silk-worms which had perished.
"In the depths of the wood the woodpecker laboured obstinately at the venerable trunks; one might hear him at his task when all other sounds had ceased. We listened in trembling silence to the mysterious blows of that indefatigable workman mingling with the owl's slow and lamentable voice.
"It was my highest ambition to have a bird all to myself—a turtle-dove. Those of my mother's—so familiar, so plaintive, so tenderly resigned at breeding-time—attracted me strongly towards them. If a young girl feels like a mother for the doll which she dresses, how much more so for a living creature which responds to her caresses! I would have given everything for this treasure. But it was not to be so; and the dove was not my first love.
"The first was a flower, whose name I do not know.
"I had a small garden, situated under an enormous fig-tree, whose humid shades rendered useless all my cultivation. Feeling very sad and sorely discouraged, I descried one morning, on a pale-green stem, a beautiful little golden blossom. Very little, trembling at the lightest breath, its feeble stalk issued from a small basin excavated by the rains. Seeing it there, and always trembling, I supposed it was cold, and provided it with a canopy of leaves. How shall I express the transports which this discovery awakened? I alone knew of its existence; I alone possessed it. All day we could do nothing but gaze at each other. In the evening I glided to its side, my heart full of emotion. We spoke little, for fear of betraying ourselves. But ah! what tender kisses before the last adieu! These joys endured but three days. One afternoon my flower folded itself up slowly, never again to re-open. There was an end to its love.
"I kept to myself my keen regret, as I had kept my happiness. No other flower could have consoled me; a life more full of life was needed to restore the freedom of my soul.
"Every year my good nurse came to see me, invariably bringing some little present. On one occasion, with a mysterious air, she said to me, 'Put thy hand in my basket.' I did so, expecting to find some fruit, but felt a silken fur, and something trembling. Ah! it is a rabbit! Seizing it, I ran in all directions to announce the news. I hugged the poor animal with a convulsive joy, which nearly proved fatal to it. My head was troubled with giddiness. I could not eat. My sleep was disturbed by painful dreams. I saw my rabbit dying; I was unable to move a single step to succour it. Oh! how beautiful it was, my rabbit, with its pink nose, and its fur as polished as a mirror! Its large pearled ears, which were constantly in motion, its fantastic gambols, had, I confess, a share of my admiration. As soon as the morning dawned, I escaped from my mother's bed to visit my favourite, and carry it a green leaf or two. There it sat, and gravely ate the leaves, casting upon me protracted glances, which I thought full of affection; then, erecting itself on its hind paws, it turned to the sun its little snow-white belly, and sleeked its fine whiskers with marvellous dexterity.
"Nevertheless, slander was busy in its detraction; its face was too small, said its enemies, and it was very gluttonous. To-day, I might subscribe to these assertions; but at seven years of age I fought for the honour of my rabbit! Alas! there was no need to make it the subject of dispute, it lived so short a time. One Sunday, my mother having set out for the town with my sister and eldest brother, we were wandering—we, the little ones—in the enclosure, when a sudden report broke over our heads. A strange cry, like an infant's first moan, followed it close at hand. My rabbit had been wounded by a flash of fire. The unfortunate beast had transgressed beyond the vineyard-hedge, and a neighbour, having nothing better to do, had amused himself with shooting at it.
"I was in time to see it rise up, bleeding. So great was my grief that I almost choked, utterly unable to sob out a single word. But for my father, who received me in his arms, and by gentle words gave my full heart relief, I should have fainted. My limbs yielded under me. Pardon the tears which this recollection still calls forth.
"For the first time, and in early youth, I had a revelation of death, abandonment, desolation. The house, the garden, appeared to me empty and bare. Do not laugh: my grief was bitter, and all the deeper because concentrated in myself.
"Thenceforth, having learned the meaning of death, I began to watch my father with wistful eyes. I saw, not without terror, that his face was very pale and his hair white. He would quit us; he would go 'whither the village-bell summoned him,' to use his oft-repeated phrase. I had not the strength to conceal my thoughts. Sometimes I flung my arms around his neck, exclaiming: 'Papa, do not die! oh, never die!' He embraced me, without replying; but his fine large black eyes were troubled as they gazed on me.
"I was attached to him by a thousand ties, by a thousand intimate relations. I was the daughter of his mature age, of his shattered health, of his affections. I had not that happy equilibrium which his other children derived from my mother. My father was transmitted in me (passé en moi). He said so himself: 'How I feel that thou art my daughter!'
"Years and life's trials had deprived him of nothing; to his last hour he retained the vivacity, the aspirations, and even the charm of youth. Every one felt it without being able to account for it, and all flocked around him of their own accord—women, children, men. I still see him in his little study, seated before his small black table, relating his Odyssey, his long journeys in America, his life in the colonies; one never grew weary of his stories. A maiden of twenty years, in the last stage of a pulmonary disease, heard him shortly before her end: she would fain have listened to him always; implored him to visit her, for while he was discoursing she forgot her sufferings and her decay, even the approach of death.
"This charm I speak of was not that of a clever talker only; it was due to the great goodness so plainly visible in him. The trials, the life of adventure and misfortune, which harden so many hearts, had, on the contrary, but softened his. No man in this generation—a generation so much agitated, tossed to and fro by so many waves—had undergone such painful experiences. His father, an Auvergnat, the principal of a college, then juge consulaire in our most southern city, and finally summoned to the Assembly of Notables in '88, had all the hard austerity of his country and his functions, of the school and the tribunals. The education of that era was cruel, a perpetual chastisement; the more wit, the more character, the more strength, the more did this education tend to shatter them, to break them down. My father, of a delicate and tender nature, could never have survived it, and only escaped by flying to America, where one of his brothers had previously established himself. A change of linen was his only fortune, except his youth, his confidence, his golden dreams of freedom. Thenceforth he always cherished a peculiar tenderness for that land of liberty; he often revisited it, and earnestly wished to die there.
"Called by the needs of business to St. Domingo, he was present in that island at the great crisis of the reign of Toussaint L'Ouverture. This truly extraordinary man, who up to his fiftieth year had been a slave, who comprehended and foresaw everything, did not know how to write, or to give expression to his ideas. His genius succeeded better in great actions than in fine speeches. He lacked a hand, a pen, and more—the young bold heart which shall teach the hero the heroic language, the words in harmony with the moment and the situation. Toussaint, at his age, could only utter this noble appeal: 'The First of the Blacks to the First of the Whites!'[7] Permit me to doubt if it were his. At least, if he conceived it, it was my father who gave expression to the idea.
"He loved my father warmly; he perceived his frankness, and he trusted him—he, so profoundly mistrustful, dumb with his long slavery, and secret as the tomb! But who can die without having one day unlocked his heart? It was my father's misfortune that at certain moments Toussaint broke his silence, and made him the confidant of dangerous mysteries. Thenceforth, all was over; he became afraid of the young man, and felt himself dependent upon him—a new servitude, which could only end with my father's death. Toussaint threw him into prison, and then, with a fresh access of fear, would have sacrificed him. Fortunately, the prisoner was guarded by gratitude; he had been bountiful to many of the blacks; a negress whom he had protected, warned him of his peril, and assisted him to escape from it. All his life long he sought that woman, to show his gratitude towards her; he did not discover her until some fourteen years afterwards, on his last voyage; she was then living in the United States.
"To return: though out of prison, he was not saved. Wandering astray in the forest, at night, without a guide, he had cause to dread the Maroons, those implacable enemies of the whites, who would have killed him, in ignorance that they were murdering the best friend of their race. Fortune is the boon of youth; he escaped every danger. Having discovered a good horse, whenever the blacks issued from their hiding-places, one touch of the spear, a wave of the hat, a cry: 'Advanced guard of General Toussaint!' and this was enough. At that formidable name all took to flight, and disappeared as if by enchantment.
"Such was the tenderness of my father's soul, that he did not withdraw his regard from the great man who had misunderstood him. When, at a later period, he saw him in France, abandoned by everybody, a wretched prisoner in a fort of the Jura, where he perished of cold and misery,[8] he alone was faithful to him. Despite his errors, despite the deeds of violence inseparable from the grand and terrible part which that man had played, he revered in him the daring pioneer of a race, the creator of a world. He corresponded with him until his death, and afterwards with his family.
"A singular chance ordained that my father should be engaged in the isle of Elba when the First of the Whites, dethroned in his turn, arrived to take possession of his miniature kingdom. Heart and imagination, my father fell captive to this wonderful romance. An American, and imbued with Republican ideas, he became on this occasion, and for the second time, the courtier of misfortune. He was the most intimate of the servants of the Emperor, of his children, of that accomplished and adored lady who was the charm and happiness of his exile. He undertook to convey her back to France in the perilous return of March 1815. This attraction, had there been no obstacle, would have led him even to St. Helena. As it was, he could not endure the restoration of the Bourbons, and returned to his beloved America.
"The New World was not ungrateful, and made the happiness of his life. He had resigned every official capacity in order to abandon himself wholly to the more independent career of tuition. He taught in Louisiana. That colonial France, isolated, sundered by the events of her mother-land's history, and mingling so many diverse elements of population, breathes ever the breath of France. Among my father's pupils was an orphan, of English and German extraction. She came to him when very young, to learn the first elements of knowledge; she grew under his hands, and loved him more and more; she found a second family, a second father; she sympathized with the paternal heart, with a charm of youthful vivacity which our French of the south preserve in their mature age. She had but three faults: wealth, beauty, extreme youth—for she was at least thirty years younger than my father; but neither of them perceived it, and they never reminded themselves of it. My mother has been inconsolable for my father's death, and has ever since worn mourning.
"My mother longed to see France, and my father, in his pride of her, was delighted to show to the Old World the brilliant flower he had gathered in the New. But anxious as he was to maintain this young Creole lady in the position and with the fortune which she had always enjoyed, he would not embark until he had accomplished, with her consent, a religious and holy act. This was the manumission of his slaves—of those, at least, above the age of twenty-one; the young, whom he was prevented by the American law from setting free, received from him their future liberty, and, on attaining their majority, were to rejoin their parents. He never lost sight of them. They were always before his eyes; he knew their names, their ages, and their appointed hour of liberty. In his French home, he took note of these epochs, and would say, with a glow of happiness, 'To-day, such an one becomes free!'
"See my father now in his native country, happy in a residence near his birth-place—building, planting, bringing up his family, the centre of a young world in which everything sprung from him: the house, the garden, were his creation; even his wife, whom he had reared and trained, and whom everybody thought to be his daughter. My mother was so young that her eldest daughter seemed to be her sister. Five other children followed, almost in as many successive years, promptly enwreathing my father with a living garland, which was his special pride. Few families exhibited a greater variety of tastes and temperaments; the two worlds were distinctly represented in ours: the French of the south with the sparkling vivacity of Languedoc—the grave colonists of Louisiana marked from their birth with the phlegmatic idiosyncrasies of the American character.
"It was ordered, however, that, with the exception of the eldest, who was already my mother's companion and shared with her the management of the household, the five youngest should receive their education in common from one master—my father. Notwithstanding his age, he undertook the duties of preceptor and schoolmaster. He gave up to us his whole day, from six in the morning until six in the evening. He reserved for his correspondence, his favourite studies, only the first hours of morning, or, more truly speaking, the last hours of night. Retiring to rest very early, he rose every day at three o'clock, without taking any heed of his pulmonary weakness. First of all, he threw wide his door, and there, before the stars or the dawn, according to the season, he blessed God; and God also blessed that venerable head, silvered by the experiences of life, not by the passions of humanity. In summer time, after his devotions, he took a short walk in the garden, and watched the insects and the plants awake. His knowledge of them was wonderful; and very often, after breakfast, taking me by the hand, he would describe the nature of each flower, would point out where each little animal that he had surprised at dawn took refuge. One of these was a snake, which the sight of my father did not in the least disconcert; each time that he seated himself near its domicile, it never failed to put forth its head and peer at him curiously. He alone knew that it was there, and he told none but me of its retirement; it remained a secret between us.
"In those morning-hours everything he met with became a fertile text for his religious effusions. Without formal phrases, and inspired by true feeling, he spoke to me of the goodness of God, for whom there is neither great nor small, but all are brothers in His eyes, and all are equals.
"Associated with my brothers in their labours, I also took a part in those of my mother and my sister. When I put aside my grammar and arithmetic, it was to take up the needle.
"Happily for me, our life, naturally blending with that of the fields, was, whether we willed it or not, frequently varied by charming incidents which broke the chains of habit. Study has commenced; we apply ourselves with eagerness to our books; but what now? See, a storm is coming! the hay will be spoiled. Quick, we must gather it in! Everybody sets to work; the very children hasten thither; study is adjourned; we toil courageously, and the day goes by. It is a pity, for the rain does not fall; the storm has lingered on the Bordeaux side; it will come to-morrow.
"At harvest-time we frequently diverted ourselves with gleaning. In those grand moments of fruition, at once a labour and a festival, all sedentary application is impossible; one's thoughts are in the fields. We were constantly escaping out-of-doors, with the lark's swiftness; we disappeared among the furrows—we little ones concealed by the tall corn, hidden among the forest of ripe ears.
"It was well understood that during the vintage there was no time to think of study: much needed labourers, we lived among the vines; it was our right. But before the grape ripened, we had numerous other vintages, those of the fruit-trees—cherries, apricots, peaches. Even at a later period, the apples and the pears imposed upon us new and severe labours, in which it was a matter of conscience that our hands should be employed. And thus, even in winter, these necessities returned—to act, to laugh, and to do nothing. The last tasks, occurring in mid-November, were perhaps the most delightful; a light mist then enfolded everything; I have seen nothing like it elsewhere; it was a dream, an enchantment. All objects were transfigured under the wavy folds of the vast pearl-gray canopy which, at the breath of the warm autumn, lovingly alighted hither and thither, like a farewell kiss.
"The dignified hospitality of my mother, my father's charm of manner and piquant conversation, drew upon us also the unforeseen distractions of visitors from the town, constraining suspensions of our studies, at which we did not weep. But the great and unceasing visit was from the poor, who well knew the house and the hand inexhaustibly opened by charity. All participated in its benefits, even the very animals; and it was a curious and diverting thing to see the dogs of the neighbourhood, patiently, silently seated on their hind legs, waiting until my father should raise his eyes from his book: they felt assured that he would not resist the mute eloquence of their prayer. My mother, more reasonable, was inclined to drive away these indiscreet guests who came at their own invitation. My father felt that he was wrong, and yet he never failed to throw them stealthily some fragments, which sent them away satisfied.
"This they knew perfectly well. One day, a new guest, lean, bristling, unprepossessing, something between a dog and a wolf, arrived; he was, in fact, a half-breed of the two species, born in the forests of the Gresigne. He was very ferocious, very irascible, and bore much too close a resemblance to his wolfish mother. But, besides this, he was intelligent, and gifted with a very keen instinct. From the first he gave himself wholly up to my father, and neither words nor rough usage could induce him to quit his side. For us he had but little love; and we repaid him in kind, seizing every opportunity of playing him a hundred tricks. He ground and gnashed his teeth, though, out of regard for my father, he abstained from devouring us. To the poor he was furious, implacable, very dangerous; which decided us on suffering him to be lost. But there was no such chance. He always came back again. His new masters would chain him to a post; chains and post, he carried them all off, and brought them into our house. It was too much for my father; he would never forsake him.
"But the cats enjoyed even more of his good graces than the dogs. This was due to his early education, to the cruel years spent at college; his brother and himself, beaten and repulsed, between the harshness of their home and the severities of their school, had found a consolation in a couple of cats. This predilection was transmitted to his family—each of us, in childhood, possessed our cat. The gathering at the fireside was a beautiful spectacle; all the grimalkins, in furred dignity, sitting majestically under the chairs of their young masters. One alone was missing from the circle—a poor wretch, too ugly to figure among the others; he knew his unworthiness, and held himself aloof, in a wild timidity which nothing was able to conquer. As in every assembly (such is the piteous malignity of our nature!) there must be a butt, a scapegoat, who receives all the blows, he, in ours, filled this unthankful rôle. If there were no blows, at least there were abundant mockeries: we named him Moquo. Weak, and scantily provided with fur, he stood in more need than the others of the genial hearth; but we children filled him with fear: even his comrades, better clothed in their warm ermine, appeared to esteem him but lightly, and to look at him askant. Of course, therefore, my father turned to him, and fondled him; the grateful animal lay down under that beloved hand, and gained confidence. Wrapped up in his coat, and revived by its warmth, he would frequently be brought, unseen, to the fireside. We quickly caught sight of him; and if he showed a hair, or the tip of an ear, our laughter and our glances threatened him, in spite of my father. I can still see that shadow gathering itself up—melting, so to speak—in its protector's bosom, closing its eyes, annihilating itself, well content to see nothing.
"All that I have read of the Hindus, and their tenderness for nature, reminds me of my father. He was a Brahmin. More even than the Brahmins did he love every living thing. He had lived in a time of blood and war—he had been an eye-witness of the most terrible slaughters of men that had ever disgraced history; and it seemed as if that frightful lavishness of the irrecoverable good, which is life, had given him a respect for all life, an insurmountable aversion to all destruction.
"This had in time arrived at such an extreme, that he would have willingly lived upon vegetable food alone. He would have no viands of blood; they excited his horror. A morsel of chicken, or, more often, an egg or two, served for his dinner. And frequently he dined standing.
"Such a regimen, however, could not strengthen him. Nor did he economize his strength, expending it largely in lessons, in conversations, and in the habitual overflow of a too benevolent heart, which lived in all things, interested itself in all. Age came, and with it anxieties: family anxieties? no, but from jealous neighbours or unfaithful debtors. The crisis of the American banks dealt a severe blow to his fortune. He came to the extreme resolution, in spite of his ill health and his years, of once more visiting America, in the belief that his personal activity and his industry might re-establish affairs, and secure the fortune of his wife and children.
"This departure was terrible. It was preceded for me by another blow. I had quitted the mansion and the country; I had entered a boarding-school in the town. Cruel servitude, which deprived me of all that made my life—of air and respiration! Everywhere, walls! I should have died, but for the frequent visits of my mother, and the rarer visits of my father, to which I looked forward with a delirious impatience that perhaps love has never known. But now that my father himself was leaving us—heaven, earth, everything seemed undone. With whatever hope of reunion he might endeavour to cheer me, an internal voice, distinct and terrible, such as one hears in great trials, told me that he would return no more.
"The house was sold, and the plantations laid out by our hands, the trees which belonged to the family, were abandoned. Our animals were plainly inconsolable at my father's departure. The dog—I forget for how many successive days—seated himself on the road which he had taken at his departure, howled, and returned. The most disinherited of all, the cat Moquo, no longer confided in any person, though he still came to regard with furtive glances the empty place. Then he took his resolution, and fled to the woods, from which we could never call him back; he resumed his early life, miserable and savage.
"And I, too, I quitted the paternal roof, the hearth of my young years, with a heart for ever wounded. My mother, my sister, my brothers, the sweet friendships of infancy, disappeared behind me. I entered upon a life of trial and isolation. At Bayonne, however, where I first resided, the sea of Biarritz spoke to me of my father; the waves which break on its shore, from America to Europe, repeated the story of his death; the snow-white ocean birds seemed to say, 'We have seen him.'
"What remained to me? My climate, my birth-land, my language. But even these I lost. I was compelled to go to the North, to an unknown tongue and a hostile sky, where the earth for half a year wears mourning weeds. During these long seasons of frost, my failing health extinguishing imagination, I could scarcely re-create for myself my ideal South. A dog might have somewhat consoled me: in default, I made two little friends, who resembled, I fancied, my mother's turtle-doves. They knew me, loved me, sported by my fireside; I gave to them the summer which my heart had not.