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that probably with a view to collecting her faculties and reflecting on her situation during her travels, she had withdrawn entirely within her house.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.
Of a sudden, James gave a piercing yell, bounded up perpendicularly three feet in the air, fell on his back, scrambled up his ladder, and took refuge behind the bust of Malagutti. This revulsion of feeling was brought about by Gazelle, who, tired of a game in which she had no share of the fun, had at last given signs of life by digging her sharp clammy claws into the bare, hairless flesh of James the First’s posteriors. The latter was the more upset by this aggression, because the attack came from a totally unexpected quarter.
At this juncture, a customer came into the studio, and, on a sign from Decamps, I took my hat and stick and departed.
I was still on the landing, when Decamps called me back.
“By the way,” he said, “come and spend the evening with us tomorrow.”
“Why! What is going on in particular tomorrow?”
“We are going to enjoy a supper and a lecture.”
“Nonsense!”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Camargo is billed to eat a hundred flies, and Jadin to read a paper.”