X
How a Mountebank Can Be More Cunning Than a Learned Doctor
Nevertheless, Doctor Heraclius continued his series of discoveries without becoming discouraged. Henceforth every animal had a mysterious significance in his eyes. He ceased to see the beast itself in contemplating the man who was purifying himself in its guise; and at the very sight of this invisible sign of expiation he would speculate upon the past sins of the soul dwelling therein.
One day when he was strolling in the Square at Balançon, he saw a large wooden hut from which came the sound of terrible howling, while on the platform a mountebank incoherently invited the crowd to come and see the terrible apache tamer Tomahawk or Rumbling Thunder. Heraclius, much impressed, paid the penny demanded and went in. O Fortune that watches over great minds! Hardly had he entered the hut when he saw an enormous cage on which were written words that flamed suddenly before his dazzled eyes: The Man of the Woods. The Doctor immediately experienced that nervous shiver which accompanies a great mental shock, and, trembling with emotion, went nearer. He saw an enormous monkey sitting quietly on its posterior with its legs crossed like a tailor or a Turk. Before this superb specimen of man in his last transmigration, Heraclius Gloss, pale with joy, stood lost in profound meditation. After a few minutes, the Man of the Woods, divining, without doubt, the irresistible sympathy suddenly produced in the heart of the Man of Cities, who was stubbornly staring at him, began to make such a frightful grimace at his regenerate brother that the Doctor felt the hairs of his head stand on end. Then, having executed a fantastic somersault absolutely incompatible with the dignity of a man, even of a man completely fallen in estate, the four-handed gentleman gave way to the most unseemly hilarity at the sight of the Doctor’s beard. The Doctor, however, found nothing shocking in the gaiety of this victim of former sins. On the contrary he saw in it one similarity the more with mankind, a still greater probability of relationship; and his scientific curiosity became so intense that he resolved to buy this master of grimaces, no matter what the price, in order to study him at leisure. What an honour for himself, what a triumph for the great doctrine, if he succeeded at last in getting into communication with the animal side of humanity, in understanding this poor monkey and making the monkey understand him!
Naturally enough the proprietor of the menagerie was loud in praise of his tenant: he was the most intelligent, gentle, well-behaved, lovable animal that he had ever seen in all his long career as a showman of wild beasts; and to prove his word he went close to the bars of the cage and put his hand inside. The monkey promptly bit it—by way of a joke. Naturally, too, the showman demanded a fabulous price. Heraclius paid it without argument. Then, preceded by two porters bent double under the enormous cage, the Doctor went off in triumph in the direction of his own home.