w almost as much
insolence as if he had been a man. His master was obliged to kill him,
so mischievous did he gradually become.

One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in flower,
occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes which the
tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure, enjoying
the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the
rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds
of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future,
I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris,
playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to
do. I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly
in discord with the sublime harmony of nature. If the distant notes of
Roland's Horn had only filled the air with life, perhaps--but a noisy
fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you the expression of
human ideas and the phraseology of music! This Amphion, who was
walking up and down the dining-room, finished by taking a seat on the
window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey. Perhaps he was looking for
an audience. Suddenly I saw the animal quietly descend from his little
dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow his head forward like a swimmer
and fold his arms over his bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline
listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery
tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the
window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a
rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long,
approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know
whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try
to learn music, but at the present moment, when I laugh much less than
I did in those careless days, I never think of that monkey without a
smile; the semi-man began by grasping the instrument with his fist and
by sniffing at it as if he were tasting the flavor of an apple. The
snort from his nostrils probably produced a dull harmonious sound in the
sonorous wood and then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the
violin, turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held
it straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it
up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile creatures.
He seem