XI
In Which It Is Shown That Heraclius Gloss Was in No Way Exempt from All the Weaknesses of the Stronger Sex
But the nearer he got to his house, the slower he walked, for a problem, very very much more difficult than that of philosophic truth, was disturbing his mind—a problem which the unfortunate doctor formulated thus:
“By means of what subterfuge shall I be able to hide from my servant Honorine the introduction into my house of this human being in the rough?”
Ah! the luckless Heraclius, who undaunted could face the formidable shrugs of the Dean’s shoulders and the terrible chaff of the Warden, was far from being as brave before the outbursts of his servant Honorine. But why should the Doctor have been so afraid of this freshfaced, pleasant little woman who seemed so brisk and so devoted to her master’s interests? Ask why Hercules dallied at the feet of Omphale, and why Samson allowed Delilah to rob him of his strength and his courage, which, as the Bible tells us, were in his hair.
One day, alas! when the Doctor was walking in the fields, nursing his despair over a great passion wherein he had been betrayed (for it was not without cause that the Dean and the Warden were so much amused on their way home on a certain evening) he met at a hedge corner a little girl tending sheep. The learned man, who had not always and exclusively been searching for philosophic truth and who, besides, did not at that time suspect the great mystery of metempsychosis, instead of paying attention to the sheep, as he certainly would have done, if he had known facts of which he was then ignorant, began, alas! to chat with her who tended them. Soon after he took her into his service and this first act of weakness led to further ones. He became one of his shepherdess’ sheep himself after a little while, and it was whispered that although this rustic Delilah, like the one in the Bible, had cut off the hair of the poor unsuspecting man, she had not on that account deprived his forehead of all ornament?
Alas! what he had foreseen came to pass and even exceeded his expectations. At the very sight of the inhabitant of the woods in his wire cage, Honorine abandoned herself to an outburst of unbecoming fury and having overwhelmed her master with a shower of most ill-sounding epithets, turned to let her anger fall upon her unexpected guest.
But the latter, doubtless because he had not the same reason as had the Doctor to humour such an ill-mannered house keeper, began to cry and howl and stamp and gnash his teeth: he clung to the bars of his cage in so furious a manner, and accompanied his action with gestures so entirely indiscreet in the presence of a person whom he was meeting for the first time that Honorine was forced to withdraw like a defeated warrior and shut herself up in her kitchen.
And so, master of the field and delighted with the unexpected help with which his intelligent companion had furnished him, Heraclius carried off his prize to his study and installed the cage and its occupant in front of the desk in a corner by the fire.