Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

It was a warm night of September, with a starry sky to be seen here and there between the clouds of sulphurous smoke which floated above the ramparts. Few walked abroad, for there was danger in the streets, and scarcely any cessation of the flying shells which the Prussians hurled upon the doomed city. Sadi was accustomed to the awful sounds and sights which accompanied the siege, and they were powerless any longer to affright him. Even the dead in the gutters--the children who had not made the war but paid the price of it with their young blood--found him callous and without sympathy. As these had died, so he would die and be at rest. He envied them as they lay there--the flare of the burning houses showed him the white faces and they seemed to sleep. Sadi believed that when next he slept it would be as these--eternally and without pain.

He was indifferent to the danger; nevertheless some little measure of prudence remained to him, and he walked in the centre of the street to avoid the flying fragments and the falling timbers. Doleful cries from stricken houses fell upon deaf ears so far as Sadi the fiddler was concerned. The warnings of a friendly soldier, who told him that he was drawing perilously near the zone of fire, he received with a curt word of thanks. Had the man given him a crust he would have kissed him on both cheeks; but the fellow was hungry himself, and the two parted surlily--the one to a beer-shop, the other toward the ramparts.

"You can play them a tune, old fellow," the soldier said.

Sadi answered, "Why so, friend, since the houses dance already?"

Yes; the houses danced indeed, and the mad music of the guns waxed more terrible as Sadi approached the ramparts and could see the cannon for himself. It was just like a display of fireworks in the gardens of the Tuileries, he said. From minute to minute the dark background of the sky would be cleaved by a line of fire, which marked the path of an incendiary shell as it soared above the quivering city and fell in a shower of flame upon house, or church, or citadel. The hither ground was a mighty waste of rubble, a desert of rubbish, where a few weeks ago houses had stood up proudly, and churches had invited worshippers, and children had found their homes. And all this misery, this untold and savage destruction, was the work of the hated Prussians over yonder, where the night was red and the darkness behind it shielded the assassins. Sadi, in the presence of those who were doing something for France, asked himself what he had done. The answer was, "Nothing." He reflected upon it a little bitterly and turned away toward the west, walking from the ramparts of that unhappy quarter of the city which the Prussians had destroyed ten days ago and now forgotten.

The path was desolate--none trod it but Sadi the fiddler, and he stumbled often as he went. So completely had the Prussians demolished the quarter that the very contour of the streets was lost and a dismal plain presented itself--an open field of rubbish, broken here and there by great abysses which once had been the cellars of the houses. Sadi did not know why he walked in such a place or what hope of bread it could give him; but when he stumbled upon an open cellar he reflected that, after all, the house had been quitted in haste, and that some provision might have been left in its larders. The bare possibility appealing to his ravenous hunger sent him climbing down into the cellar like a schoolboy upon a forbidden venture. Impatiently, and with a strength he did not know that he possessed, he delved among the rubble, thrust at the great beams, and wormed his way toward the vault. None would interfere with him, he argued; there was no law, military or civil, which forbade a man to share a bone with the dogs. Sadi was like a miser seeking for his gold; and when at length he stood upright in that which undoubtedly had been the larder of a house, he felt all the joy of an explorer who has discovered an unknown city. Unhappily, such a transport endured for the briefest of moments. Sadi was just telling himself that he was a very lucky fellow when a great hand, thrust out of the darkness, clutched at his throat, and the rays of a lantern shining full in his face blinded him to any other sights.

"Well, my body-snatcher," cried a voice in guttural French, "and what may you be doing here?"

A German spoke; there was no doubt of it at all. Moreover, he was a huge fellow, probably a Prussian from the North; and although he wore the uniform of a French regiment of chasseurs, it was ridiculously small for him and showed its deficiencies when his cloak fell aside. Quick-witted and mentally alert, Sadi guessed the fellow's business there at the first hazard. He could be no one else than one of the many Prussian spies who then found their way in and out of Strasburg so readily. This desert waste of the city would harbour him surely--perchance he waited an opportunity to recross the lines, and was hiding meanwhile in this labyrinth like a fox that has gone to earth. All this passed through Sadi's mind in a moment, but it was accompanied by a cold shiver as though icy water were running down his back. For he perceived at once that the Prussian carried a revolver in his right hand and that the finger itched upon the trigger. A word, a step, might cost him his life. Sadi stood rigid as a statue, while the sweat gathered in heavy drops upon his brow.

"Come, no nonsense!" the Prussian repeated, menacingly. "You had better be honest with me. What is your business here? I will give you the half of a minute to tell me."

Sadi breathed heavily, but he spoke apparently without emotion.

"I have had nothing to eat for twenty hours," he said; "naturally I came here for food."

The Prussian interrupted him with a brutal laugh.

"Then you certainly live on vermin, my bag of bones," he retorted, with a jeer. "Come, your time is nearly up, and my fingers are impatient. You will really be very foolish if you are not candid with me."

He raised the pistol slowly, and deliberately touched Sadi's forehead with the cold barrel. The lantern's light showed a hard face and small eyes set above puffy cheeks. He wore a moustache in the French fashion and an uncouth imperial, which added to his grotesque appearance. Sadi knew that such a man would think it no greater crime to shoot a Frenchman than to drown a dog. Heroically as he had philosophized about death ten minutes ago, the nearer presence of it was very dreadful to him. He could imagine the sting of the bullet as it crashed through his forehead, the sudden giddiness, the voice which said, "Never again shall you speak, or breathe, or look up to the sun." A desperate desire of life came to him. He trembled violently, pressed his hand to his heart, but could not utter a single word. The Prussian watched him without compassion. He began to count ironically, "One, two, three," he said; "I will count ten, _canaille_," and he started off from the beginning again. He was at the number "five" when a second voice in the cellar caused him to turn sharply upon his heel and then to salute in the rigid German fashion.

"Ah, Herr Lieutenant, here is a job for you," he exclaimed, as though glad to be quit of the responsibility. "I found this rat in the hole here. Look at him for yourself and see what kind of a rogue he is."

The new-comer was quite a youth, a fair, freckled German lad, in little more than his twentieth year. He, too, wore a French uniform, but it was that of the artillery, and Sadi observed that it was a better fit than the loose clothes of the rough customer who had just been threatening him. Such trifling facts occupied the fiddler's mind to the exclusion of all else. He believed that he was about to die, and yet could count the buttons on the lieutenant's tunic, guess at the State he came from, and hazard the colour of his eyes. The lad was a Bavarian, he said, a merry, laughing youngster. Impossible to believe that he would sanction a brutal murder. Sadi breathed quickly--he appealed to the lad's sympathy in an earnest, manly voice.

"Herr Lieutenant, it is nothing of the kind," he protested; "I am a poor wretch of a fiddler, whose garret your people have just burned."

It was not a wise thing to have said, and the young soldier's interruption told Sadi as much.

"My people, sir!" he cried, sharply, and with feigned astonishment. "What people do you mean, then?"

"It is as I say," interrupted the trooper; "he is a spy who has tracked us to our hole, Herr Lieutenant. Better make an end of him while there is time."

"But not with a pistol, trooper," retorted the boy, with a little laugh. "At least, let us sup first."

Sadi breathed again, while the two Prussians discussed the pros and cons in a low voice. "If these men would but quarrel!" was his idea. They, however, had no intention of doing anything of the kind, for presently they ceased to wrangle, and the young soldier exclaimed, with some severity:--

"You say that you are a fiddler. What proofs of that can you give us?"

"My fiddle," answered Sadi, almost joyously; "you will find it on the stones upstairs, sir."

The answer surprised the men very much.

"Go and look for it, trooper," said the officer, quietly; "there is plenty of time before daylight to settle this fellow's affair. Besides, the captain is fond of a little music."

The trooper clambered up out of the cellar at the word of command, while the lieutenant calmly lighted a cigar and surveyed Sadi with an ironical glance.

"Poor business, yours, just now, is it not?" he asked.

"So poor that I am starving," said Sadi, with dignified simplicity.

"Ah! And you look for your supper on the dust-heaps. Just like a fiddler."

"I have walked to the ramparts and back every evening for three years," rejoined Sadi, whose self-possession remained to him. "The habit clings to me; besides, what is the harm?" he asked.

"The captain will teach you that; don't let me deceive you at all; he will certainly shoot you, old fellow. For myself, I am sensitive; it is my weakness to prefer live bodies to dead ones. I could not--no, I could not harm a fly, my Stradivarius. That is why you are now allowed to say your prayers."

His own humour amused him, and presently he continued:--

"But perhaps you do not want to say your prayers, my Amati. Other people generally do that when Frenchmen are fiddling. Here is your violin, I see. Let us play it together."

The trooper returned while he spoke, carrying the frayed black leather case which stood for all that life could give to Sadi Descourcelles. When the lieutenant seized upon it with rough hands it was as though someone had struck Sadi a blow.

"Gently, for Heaven's sake, sir," he cried. "Do you know that my fiddle is worth five thousand francs?"

"To us possibly a good deal more," retorted the lieutenant, uncompassionately. "The captain shall read your music, my little Paganini. This way, if you please, and mind your precious neck if you prefer pistols."

It was the lieutenant's evident idea that the violin-case contained the private papers of a common spy, who had fallen by some lucky chance into the hands of the very men he would have betrayed to the French. Proud at the capture, and confident of applause from his superior officers, he now pushed Sadi across the cellar in which they stood to a door upon the far side of it, whence a flight of steps led downward to a second cellar, more spacious and less encumbered. Here candles burned upon a rude table, a fire flickered upon a tiled hearth, and burly figures moved about a copper, whence a fragrant smell diffused itself. Sadi perceived at once that he had been conducted into a very nest of Prussians. He had no doubt whatever that these were the men who had been carrying news of Strasburg to the Red Prince since the siege began; their startled exclamations when the door opened, the quick exchange of sign and counter-sign, left no other conclusion possible. And he understood what he had to hope from them--he, who knew their secret and could, by a word, bring a rabble there which would tear them limb from limb.

The trooper thrust Sadi forward toward the fire, while coarse, stubbly faces peered into his own, and more than one hand reached out for a candle to examine him more closely. To the hurried questions: "Whom have you here; what cattle is this?" the lieutenant answered, simply: "I must see the captain; please to wake him." In a tense interval, during which someone entered a lunette of the cellar and touched a sleeping figure upon the shoulder, the ruffian by the copper asked Sadi if he were hungry, and, being answered "Yes," he took a ladleful of the boiling soup and poured it over the prisoner's fingers. Sadi cried out sharply; but before the act could be repeated a burly man strode out of the alcove and gave the fellow a box on the ear which sounded like a pistol-shot.

"What do you mean by that, sergeant?" the new-comer asked.

"A spy from the ramparts. I was keeping him warm, Herr Captain," was the answer.

"But this is no spy; this is Sadi the fiddler."

Sadi turned with a cry of joy.

"Ludenmayer! You, my friend!" he exclaimed.

"Sadi! Old Sadi the fiddler! Impossible!"

"Indeed, it is possible. Old Sadi, as you say, and so hungry that he could eat the bones off your dishes."

"Then he shall sup with us. A hungry man makes friends with strange company, and we are that, as you guess, Maître Sadi. Come, sergeant, fill our friend a bowl of soup. Let him spy out that to begin with. Eh, Sadi, you will not refuse a bowl of soup even from the Prussians? Then let us see you fall to. We can talk of old friends afterwards."

There were some murmurs at this from the men about the table, but the sergeant obeyed the order sullenly, and a bowl of the hot soup was set before the astonished Sadi almost before he had realized that a lucky accident had saved his life--for the moment, at any rate. Ludenmayer, honestly glad to see an old acquaintance, even under such circumstances, began to assure the rest that they had nothing to fear from Sadi; but at this the fiddler put down his spoon and flatly contradicted his friend.

"Not so," he said, blandly; "if it were in my power I would hang the lot of you!"

They laughed at him now--laughed at him for a foolish crank, airing his absurd patriotism even at the pistol's mouth. While some of them said that he would soon have Prussians enough for his neighbours in Strasburg, others promised the city twenty, thirty, forty hours of her freedom.

"And we shall have you for our guest, friend Sadi," Ludenmayer said, affably. "We like you so much that we cannot part with you. No, we must certainly keep you until the Red Prince comes in; after that we will send you to Munich to fiddle at the opera. Eh, my boy, there's a career--to scrape this new Wagner stuff and hear the madmen say that you are a genius. Will you come to Munich and see little Lucy again? I know that you will, Sadi."

Sadi sighed, but did not answer his friend. If the name of Lucy were a sweet remembrance to him, this promise of Strasburg's surrender and of the humiliation it must put upon France cut him to the quick. These men about him, jesting in the face of death, defiant of all risks--how much, perchance, they had done in the terrible weeks of the siege to bring about this inevitable cataclysm and the ruin and death which attended it! Their reward would be promotion and applause from those who had contrived France's misfortunes. None would punish them, none bring them to account, Sadi reflected bitterly; and, reflecting, he asked himself of a sudden if he were not the appointed agent--he, the humble fiddler, sent there by the chances of the night to discover and, it might be, to betray them.

The idea came to him quite unexpectedly while the Prussians were at their supper. In another he would have scoffed at it, but Sadi had long been fretting upon his own uselessness and the poor part he had played at the time of his country's need; and now it came to him as in a flash that this was the appointed hour. That he would lose his own life in the endeavour to give these men up to France he was quite convinced; but this contemplation of sacrifice pleased him, and there was but one regret--that he could do nothing which would not wound the father of her he had so greatly loved. Yes, if he could call Frenchmen to this hiding-place they would spare none, and Ludenmayer would perish with the others. Sadi said that many a daughter mourned a father in Strasburg that day--why should little Lucy be spared? And yet he could not bring himself to harm his old friend. Did he not owe his life to him?

It was a strange scene--the big cellar lighted by guttering candles, the red fire flickering upon the hearth, and the sombre figures of the burly Prussians lolling over their dishes or their pipes. From time to time one or other would quit the place stealthily, returning anon with news from the ramparts or the streets. The young lieutenant disappeared altogether toward midnight, and Sadi knew that he had re-crossed the lines while his friends were pledging him in giant bumpers of champagne. As the hours went on the hilarity became reckless and, as it seemed to Sadi, even dangerous. Ludenmayer called for silence more than once, but the men, warmed with the wine, obeyed him reluctantly, and were soon talking and laughing again. It was at the height of such an outburst that Sadi touched his friend upon the shoulder and bethought him of the very first lie he had told in all his life.

"Did you say good-bye to the Herr Lieutenant?" he asked, in a low voice; and then continued, "I hope so, for you will never see him again, friend Ludenmayer."

The captain, who had been squatting upon a heap of straw by Sadi's side, laughed a little incredulously, but his nervousness was evident when he asked:--

"And why should we not see him again, Sadi?"

"Because they know where he will recross to-night."

"They know! Who knows, then?"

"Levoire and the staff. It is rumoured that you are hiding in the ruins. I came here to warn you--you alone, mind, not the others."

He raised a finger as much as to say, "This is the compact between us." The Prussians round about were playing cards and dominoes, and quarrelling over their games. Ludenmayer, fallen serious in a moment, seemed to be turning over Sadi's words in his mind. Presently he said:--

"Levoire was a friend of yours, I think?"

"I had the honour to be instructor to his wife."

"Then she was your informant?"

He had put the idea into Sadi's head, and the fiddler seized upon it with avidity.

"We need not go into that. If you doubt her information, prove it for yourself. Your friends here are scarcely capable."

"That is true, the cattle. They think that their work is over. I must certainly go, Sadi--and take you with me."

"Not so, Ludenmayer; I must have nothing to do with it. Besides, I am very comfortable here."

"For the time being, yes. But if anything should happen to me, they would assuredly hang you, friend Sadi."

"I will take my chances, Ludenmayer. Remember, it is you alone that I wish to serve. They will at least respect your orders."

"Give them your word to be silent, and they will let you go away at once. There is nothing easier, Sadi."

"For a Prussian, perhaps--for me, no. We have been comrades--let that suffice, Ludenmayer. A wise man would go at once."

The eyes of the two met, and the Prussian seemed to read something of this odd fellow's purpose in his dilated pupils and the stern, set expression of his mouth. It came to Ludenmayer that he and the gregarious dozen of spies with him were already in a trap from which haste alone would save them. This simple old fiddler knew much more than he would tell. Ludenmayer, trained to selfishness by his occupation, cared nothing for that which happened to the others if he could save his own skin. He was grateful to Sadi, and he wrung his hand.

"Well," he said, in a louder voice, for all to hear, "I must certainly be off, but I shall not be away long. Do not spare the bottle, Sadi. And mind you treat him well," he added, turning to the company, "for he is my guest."

The men stood to the salute mechanically, and the sentry in the passage whispering that the road was clear, Ludenmayer left the cellar with a last word in Sadi's ear.

"Take care of yourself," he said; "they are in an ugly mood."

Sadi nodded his head confidently, but his heart beat quicker when the door was shut, and he looked a little eagerly into the faces of the crew as though he would learn their purpose now that the captain was gone. It could not be very long, he argued, before Ludenmayer discovered the trick which had been played upon him and returned to charge him with it. As to the Prussians about him, some were already steeped with wine, and they lay sprawling like animals in the straw; others, and the cook was among the number of these, eyed their captain's guest suspiciously and discussed him in low voices. Sadi knew that his life hung upon a thread; but when a great ruffian drew a revolver and loaded it deliberately the fiddler was not afraid. "They will not shoot me," he said to himself; "they would be afraid of the noise." What he feared was the rope and the hook in the beam above, but he did not confess it by his looks; and turning from them with a laugh he buried his head in the straw and pretended to sleep. Soon the others imitated him, and the heavy breathing of tired men echoed through the cellar.

Sadi lay for a long while without any other idea than that of his own danger and the fate which awaited him if Ludenmayer did not come back. He had caught up the precious fiddle which the captain returned to him, and he hugged it to him as the one possession left to him in the world. Silent as the place was, the broken roof admitted sounds of the later night, the blare of bugles, and the booming of the shells. Sadi wondered what those distant troops would say if a man should go to them and cry, "The cellars by the old church of St. Gervais are full of Prussian spies; you will find them sleeping there." Could he but send that message, at least one of the wrongs of those bitter days would be avenged. And yet how impotent he was! The desert waste of land above would be without one living soul at such an hour; and he knew that any attempt to quit the cellar would bring instant death upon him. Sadi, convinced of the hopelessness of his idea, lay very still and counted the dreary hours. For a time he slept; and when he awoke it was the sentry's voice which aroused him. The man had come down to warn his comrades. A regiment of the line marched out to the assistance of the gunners at Lunette 53--you could hear their heavy tramping as they crossed the old road, now lumbered over with stones and the rubble of the tumbled houses. There would be many, very many of them, the ear said. Sadi alone amongst those who listened to the footsteps did not tremble or turn pale. He was unloosing his fiddle in its case. None saw him or thought of him in that tragic moment. "For France!" he said, and he believed it was the last word he would ever utter.

The alarm cried softly in the cellar found stupid ears and men but half-awakened from a drunken sleep. Some of the Prussians sat up with hush words upon their lips; others simply lay and listened--a regiment was marching past certainly, but what of that? They had but to lie close and to douse the lights (which they were quick to do) and their safety was assured. This they believed when sudden music, loud and distinct, sent them leaping to their feet and crying for their swords. Someone played the "Wacht am Rhein" at their very elbows--a voice roared "Shoot the fiddler down"--another voice cried out for a light. It was the supreme moment in the life of Sadi the fiddler. Never had he played so wildly or with such delight of his notes. And the darkness, he said, might yet save him. Dodging here, ducking there, he plunged into the passage and went on headlong toward the light. But he never ceased to play the "Wacht am Rhein" when he could stand a moment to breathe, and the bullets singing by him, the sword-thrusts aimed at him, did but make him play the louder.

Sadi gained the ruins above with a great gash upon his cheek and his precious fiddle cleaved in half by a cut from a Prussian sword. Up in the open his eyes beheld a glad sight. A regiment of infantry stood at the halt not twenty paces from him. Its officers were moving about as though in quest of some mystery, and when they perceived him they advanced a little curiously and bade the fiddler halt. He answered them in words which were almost incoherent. "The ruins are full of Prussians," he said, and pointed downwards to the cellars he had left. No other word was spoken or needed. Savagely, silently, as beasts of prey that have found quarry, the soldiers fixed their bayonets and began to go down. And Sadi stood entranced, listening to the cries of men in their death agony, to their prayers for mercy; and he said, "This wrong at least is avenged."

And so he turned from the scene, with his poor broken fiddle, and the long day of loneliness before him.

"I shall not play in Munich; I shall never see little Lucy again," he said. But he knew that he had done his duty, and his step was firmer when he set out again for the terrible streets of a city about to open its gates to the enemy.

_Prince Henry's Beast Book._

The many thousands who have laughed over the inimitable Artemus Ward's essays in natural history, such as "The elephant has four legs--one on each corner; he eats hay and cakes," might little suspect the analogy which exists between these humorous trifles and the serious works of the zoological pundits of the seventeenth century. If anything, far greater is the humour to be extracted from the older writers; especially when we recollect that their books and treatises on animal creation were regarded with infinite respect--veneration even--by young and old, wise and unwise, noble and plebeian, who diligently consulted them.

Unhappily, most of these productions are in Latin, and even Artemus Ward in Latin would probably lose the fine savour of merriment by which his good things are distinguished unless the translator relied upon puns, as they do in the Westminster plays. But the pictures in Aldrovandus, in Albertus Magnus, in Johannes Jonstonus, and in Conrad Gesner speak--shall we not rather say, shriek?--for themselves; and we were recently fortunate in coming across a large volume in which the best in all these books is gathered together, with English letterpress, for the benefit of a young English prince who lived and died early in the seventeenth century. It was in 1607 that Edward Topsell published his version of "Four-footed Beastes." Gesner's _chef d'oeuvre_ and those of the other writers named had been on the bookshelves for many years.

The volume in question belonged to the eldest son and heir of James I., and has his coat of arms on the cover. Next, it enjoys the distinction of having some of the plates coloured by the Royal hand, its owner being then in his thirteenth year. But, best of all, its pictures and letterpress describe for us beyond the possibility of error, and in the clearest and most perspicuous way, the wonderful quadrupeds which flourished on the face of the earth in Prince Henry's boyhood.

Beside this curious volume how tame are even the most interesting of modern natural history books! Let us begin with the king of beasts.

"Lyons bones have no marrow in them and are so hard that they will strike fire. Their neck is made of one stiffe bone, without any vertebras. They have five claws on the hinder feet and the balls of their eyes are black. Lyons eat but once in two days and drink in like manner. Formerly in England a Lyon could tell noble blood from base."

Can it be that this virtue was confined merely to the lions caged in the Heralds' College? Our Beast Booke goes on to inform us that in certain districts lions were killed, not with spears or cannon-balls, but "with the _powder of decayed fish_." From whence may we not have a faint glimmering of the reason why Jamrach's was originally situated so much nearer to Billingsgate Market than to Piccadilly?

"There is a variety of Lyon with human faces. As for the rest, the taile of a Lyon is very long, which they shake oftentimes, and by beating their sides therewith they provoke themselves to fight. The nether part of this taile is full of hairs and gristles, and some are of opinion that there is therein a little sting wherewithall the Lyon pricketh itselfe."

"The Lamia is a wild Beast, having several parts outwardly resembling an Oxe and inwardly a mule. The Lamia has a woman's face and very beautifull, also very large and comely shapes such as cannot be imitated by the art of any painter, having a very excellent colour in their fore-parts without wings, and no other voice but hissing like Dragons; but they are the swiftest of foot of all earthly beasts, so as none can escape them by running."

The chief prey of the Lamia was, it appears, members of the human species, preferably males. By its passing beauty (or, to judge by the pictorial illustration, one would say rather by its amazing novelty) it would entice men, and when they had "come neare, devoure and kill them." In fact, these lamias were so inordinately fond of their favourite refreshment that in one district "a certain crooked place in Libia neare the Sea-shore full of sand was like to a sandy Sea and all the neighbor places thereunto are deserts." A painful and humiliating lack of men has often been noticed at our modern seaside resorts.

"The hinder parts of this beast," concludes our author, "are like unto a goate, his fore-legs like a Beares and his body scaled all over like a Dragon."

Next is a contemporary picture of a Tiger.

And now we come to the Wolf. His custom in those halcyon days of natural history was, as now, to go in troops. But we read: "Their necks are pressed together, so that they cannot stir it, to look about, but they must move their whole bodies. They fall upon their prey, devouring hair, bones and all. When they are to fight in great herds they fill their bellies with earth." But this is as nothing. "When they are to pass over Rivers, they joyn tails; loaded with that weight they are not easily thrown down and the floods can hardly carry them away, being joined together. The breath of a Wolf is so fiery, that it will melt and consume the hardest bone in his stomack."

We have all of us heard of the Harpy. Below is a likeness of one that speaks for itself.

Lizards are always interesting. "There was a lizzard 8 cubits long brought to Rome from Ætheopia by the command of a Cardinal of Lisbon and the mouth of it was so wide that a child might be put into it.... Put alive into a new earthen vessel and boyle'd with 3 Sextaryes of Wine and one Cyathus, it is excellent food for one sick of the Pthisick, if he drink of it in the morning fasting."

We must not suppose that this operation would kill the lizard; the difficulty would be how to procure a vessel to stew so large a lizard. Lizard-pots are made much smaller nowadays. We dare say that the worthy Mrs. Beeton, in her most ingenious moments, never dreamt of one above four, or at most six, cubits deep.

Writers of our own time who have never gone in for a course of logic rarely condescend to complete perspicuity. They take things too often for granted. This is not old Topsell's way. "The Arabian sheep have a very broad tail," he says, "and the fatter it is the thicker it will be." We learn, too, what we should never have suspected had the author not plainly stated it, that some tails "have been seen above 150lbs. in weight." Albertus Magnus saw "a Ram that had 4 great Horns growing on his head and two long ones on his legges, that were like to Goat's Horns."

Here are some other gems from our Beast Booke:--

"Subus is an amphibion, with two Horns: he follows shoals of fish swimming in the Sea, Lobsters, Pagri, and Oculatae, are fishes that love him; but he cares for none of their love, but makes them all his prey.

"The Sphinx or Sphinga is of the kinde of Apes, having his body rough like Apes, having the upper part like a woman and their visage much like them. The voice very like a man's, but not articular, sounding as if one did speak hastily or with sorrow. Their haire browne or swarthy colour. They are bred in India and Ethyopia. The true Sphinx is of a fierce though a tameable nature and if a man do first of all perceive or discerne of these natural _Sphinges_, before the beast discerne or perceive the man, he shall be safe; but if the beast first descrie the man, then is it mortal to the man.

"The Mantichora is bred among the Indians, having a treble row of teeth beneathe and above, whose greatnesse, roughnesse and feete are like a Lyons, his face and ears like unto a mans, his eyes grey and collour red, his taile like the taile of a scorpion of the earth, armed with a sting, casting forth sharp pointed quills, his voice like the voice of a small trumpet or pipe, being in course as swift as a Hart."

Then follows further description of the Mantichora. This singular combination of lion, man, scorpion, and porcupine was implicitly believed in by all the natural history writers up to Goldsmith's day, and we are not sure that that pleasing but gullible scribe did not, privately at least, accord its existence full credence.

Leigh Hunt, in his Autobiography, describes the extraordinary effect which a sight of this beast had upon him when he encountered it in an old folio during his childhood. The Mantichora, he says, "unspeakably shocked me. It had the head of a man, grinning with rows of teeth, and the body of a wild beast, brandishing a tail armed with stings. It was sometimes called by the ancients Martichora. But I did not know that. I took the word to be a horrible compound of man and tiger. The beast figures in Pliny and the old travellers. Appolonius takes a fearful joy in describing him. 'Mantichora,' says old Morell--'bestia horrenda'--'a brute fit to give one the horrors.' The possibility of such creatures being pursued never occurred to me. Alexander, I thought, might have been encountered while crossing the Granicus, and elephants might be driven into the sea, but how could anyone face a beast with a man's head?" Leigh Hunt goes on to describe how the Mantichora impressed his whole childhood. Doubtless the sensations of the eighteenth-century child were the same felt by the early seventeenth century Prince Henry. The Mantichora was the _bête noire_ of the Royal nursery, we may depend upon it.

Scarcely less dreadful was the Collogruis, whose picture is given on the next page.

How many of us have heard of the Colus?

"There is," we read, "among the Scithians and Sarmatians a foure-footed wild beast called Colus, being in quantitie and stature betwixt a Ramnie and a Hart and dusky white coloured, but the young ones yellow." The real peculiarity of the Colus, which makes every true lover of quadrupeds regret its extinction, is described as follows: "Her manner is to drinke by the holes in her nostrils, whereby she snuffeth up aboundance of water and carrieth it in her head, so that she will live in dry pastures remote from all moisture and great season, quenching her thirst by that cisterne in her head." Imagination conjures up a huge drove of Colii, blissfully encamped in the midst of the Sahara, astonishing the passing Bedouins by their sagacity and the amazing cisterns in their craniums. There was no use trying to capture them, so fleet and nimble were they, unless, indeed, the hunter had taken the precaution to arm himself with a flute or a timbrel. In that case he had only to strike up a few airs and it was all up with the poor Colus. He would fall down with weakness, and a simple blow with a staff sufficed to dispatch him. He made excellent eating; flavoured, we suppose, by the contents of the cranial cistern afore described.

"The Camelopard or Giraffe is a beaste full of spots. He hath two little hornes growing on his head the colour of iron, his eies rolling and growing, his mouth but small like a hart's; his tongue is neare three foot long. The pace of this beast differeth from all other in the world, for he doth not move his right and left foote one after another, but both together, and so likewise the other, whereby his whole body is removed at every step or straine."

We must perforce skip the descriptions of the three kinds of Apes--Ape Satyre, the Ape Norwegian, and the Ape Pan. Then there are such creatures as the Axis, the Alborach, the Cacus, the Allocamell, and the Tragelaphus.

And how shall we tell of the Dictyes, the Crucigeran, the Gulon, and the Gorgon? Then there are dissertations on those fearful quadrupeds the Orynx and the Tarbarine.

But the Poephagus ought to detain the modern student a moment, as it must often have engrossed Prince Henry by the hour.

"This great beaste whose everie hair is two cubitts in length & yet finer than a man's, is one of the fearfullest creatures in the World: for if he perceive him to be but looked at by anybody he taketh to his heels as fast as he can goe."

The cause of his fright is his tail, which is much sought after by the natives to bind up their hair. When the hunted Poephagus can "no longer avoyde the hunter then doth he turne himselfe, hiding his taile, & looketh upon the face of the hunter with some confidence, gathering his wits together, as if to face out that he had no tayle, & that the residue of his body were not worth looking after."

Sly Poephagus! But his stratagem is in vain. For "they take off the skinne and the taile," perhaps not even killing him, and so leaving the luckless Poephagus to go roaming about the country skinless and tailless--a piteous sight. But stay. "Volateranus relateth this otherwise, that the beast biteth off his own taile and so delivereth himself from the hunter, knowing that he is not desired for any other cause." Can we not conjure up the scene for ourselves?

"Hunter: So sorry to trouble you, but your taile or your life!

"Poephagus: No trouble at all, I assure you. Allow me (_bites off his taile_). Pray accept it with my compliments (_hunter bows and retires_)."

"The Neades were certain beastes whose voice was so terrible that they shook the earth therewith," but the Strepficeros, though endowed with a more resonant title, was a very simple, inoffensive quadruped after all.

"The Cepus was a four-footed beast having a face like a Lyon & some part of the body like a panther, being as big as a wild goat or Roe-buck, or as one of the dogs of _Erithrea_ & a long taile, the which such of them as having tasted flesh will eat from their own bodies."

"The Calitrich had a long beard and a large taile." You perceive the early naturalists set great store by an animal's caudal appendage. It gave them scope for their descriptive powers.

And now let us learn something about the Cynocephale. "The Cynocephales are a kind of Apes, whose heads are like Dogges & their other part like a mans. Some there are which are able to write & naturally to discerne letters which kind the Priests bring into their Temples, & at their first entrance, the Priest bringeth him a writing Table, a pencil & Inke that so by seeing him write he may make by all whether he be of the right kind & the beast quickly sheweth his skill. The Nomades, people of Ethiopia & the nations of Mentimori live upon the milk of Cynocephals, keeping great heards of them, & killing all the males."

"The Elk is a four-footed beast commonly found in Scandinavia. His upper lip hangs out so long that he cannot eat but going backwards. He is subject to the falling sicknesse, the remedy he hath is to lift up the right claw of the hinder foot & put it to his left ear. It holds the same virtue if you cut it off."

Of the ram we are told that "for six winter months he sleeps on his right side; but after the vernal equinoctiall he rests on his right. Ælianus hath discovered this, but the butchers deny it."

"The Camel hath a manifold belly, either because he hath a great body: or, because he eats Thorny & Woody substances, God hath provided for the concoction. Puddle water is sweet to him, nor will he drink river water, till he hath troubled it with his foot. He lives a hundred years, unlesse the Ayre agree not with him. When they are on a journey they do not whip them forward: but they sing to them, whereby they run so fast that men can hardly follow them."

Modern zoologists must regret the extinction of the sixteenth-century She-goat, which, according to Prince Henry's natural history, "see as well by night as day, wherefore if those that are blind in the night eat a _Goats_ liver they are granted sight. They breathe out of their eares and nostrils."

Farther along, the national animal of the greatest of British dominions beyond the seas is thus described:--

"The _Beaver_ is a most strong creature to bite, he will never let go his teeth that meet, before he makes the bones crack. His hinder feet are like a Gooses and his fore-feet like an Apes. His fat tail is covered with a scaly skin, & he uses for a rudder when he pursues fish. He comes forth of his holes in the night: & biting off boughs of Trees about the Rivers, he makes his houses with an upper loft. When they are cut asunder they are very delightsome to see; for one lies on his back & hath the boughs between his legges & others draw him by the tail to their cottage.

"A Baboon is a Creature with a head like a dog, but in shape like a man; he will fish cunningly, for he will dive all day, & bring forth abundance of fish."

Here is a picture of a Hippopotamus or Sea-Horse devouring a crocodile tail first.

"The Elephant is a stranger with us, but that the Indians & other places have them in common. The King of the Palibroti had 90,000 of them. Many strange things are spoken of them. It is certain that of old time they carried Castles of armed men into the Field. In his heart, says Aldrovandus, he hath a wonderful big bone. Aristotle maintains that he hath three Stomacks. It is most certain (continues the careful chronicler) that in the Kingdom of Malabar they talk together, & speak with man's voice. There was, saith Ocafta, in Cochin an Elephant, who carried things to the Haven & laboured in the sea-faring matters: when he was weary the Governor of the place did force him to draw a galley from the Haven which he had begun to draw, into the sea: the Elephant refused it the Governor gave him good words, & at the last entreated him to do it for the King of Portugal, thereupon (it is hardly credible) the elephant was moored, & repeated these two words clearly, _Hoo, Hoo_, which in the language of Malabar is, _I will, I will_, & he presently drew the ship into the Sea.... They learn things so eagerly that Pliny says that an Elephant that was something dull, & was often beat for not learning well, was found acting his part by moon-light, & some say that _Elephants_ will learn to write & read. One of them learned to describe the Greek letters, & did write in the same tongue these words, _I myself writ this_."

"But," concludes the zoologist, conscious of having clinched the matter by this last proof, "_I will say no more_."

"The Ichneumon is a creature in Egypt with a long tail like a Serpents. He is an enemy to the Crocodile; for when he observes him sleeping he rolles himself in clay, & goes into his mouth, & so into his belly & eats his liver, & then leaps forth again."

Loaded with all his zoological learning we can understand how Prince Henry became a very bright little boy, far in advance of his years. We can also dimly perceive why he died so young.

It is not given to every youth--nor to every prince--to devour such marvels and live in peace and content at home or at Court, surrounded by the conventions of everyday English life. But had he survived this accumulation of wisdom, the realm would surely have boasted under King Henry IX. a "Zoo" compared with which our present establishment, excellent as it is, would have been paltry indeed. But it is too late to repine. The mantichora, the lamia, the gryphon, and the poephagus are presumably extinct, while as for our lions, bears, giraffes, and the rest of the "foure-footed beastes," these appear to have miserably abandoned all those curious traits which rendered them glorious in little Prince Henry's days, and which, we trust, will long reflect lustre on their past.

DIALSTONE LANE

_BY W. W. JACOBS_.

Copyright, 1904, by W. W. Jacobs, in the United States of America.