Never in all my life shall I forget a clown I saw in the hotel at Kiev—a mere clown.
What results might have been attained by a scientifically educated investigator, armed with all the wonderful apparatus and resources of our time!
What interesting things one might hear about a dog’s psychology, his character, docility, etc.
A new world of marvels would be opened to human knowledge.
For my part, you should know that I am quite certain that dogs possess a language and, moreover, a very rich and developed speech.”
“But, Ivan Antonovich, tell me why the learned have never made such an attempt?” asked Romashov.
Rafalski replied by a sarcastic smile.
“He, he, he! the thing is clear enough.
What do you suppose a dog is to such a learned bigwig?
A vertebrate animal, a mammal, a carnivorous animal, etc, and that’s the end of it.
Nothing more.
How could he condescend to treat a dog as if it were an intelligent, rational being? Never.
No, these haughty university despots are in reality but a trifle higher than the peasant who thought that the dog had steam instead of a soul.”
He stopped short and began snorting and splashing angrily whilst he fussed and fumed with a gutta-percha tube that he was trying to apply to the bottom of the aquarium.
Romashov summoned all his courage, made a violent effort of will, and succeeded in blurting out—
“Ivan Antonovich, I have come on an important—very important business——”
“Money?”
“Yes, I am ashamed to trouble you.
I don’t require much—only ten roubles—but I can’t promise to repay you just yet.”
Ivan Antonovich pulled his hands out of the water and began slowly to dry them on a towel.
“I can manage ten roubles—I have not more, but these I’ll lend you with the greatest pleasure.
You’re wanting to be off, I suppose, on some spree or dissipation?
Well, well, don’t be offended; I’m merely jesting.
Come, let us go.”
“Colonel Brehm” took Romashov through his suite of apartments, which consisted of five or six rooms, in which every trace of furniture and curtains was lacking.
Everywhere one’s nose was assailed by the curious, pungent odour that is always rife in places where small animals are freely allowed to run riot.
The floors were so filthy that one stumbled at nearly every step.
In all the corners, small holes and lairs, formed of wooden boxes, hollow stubble, empty casks without bottoms, etc., etc., were arranged.
Trees with bending branches stood in another room. The one room was intended for birds, the other for squirrels and martens.
All the arrangements witnessed to a love of animals, careful attention, and a great faculty for observation.
“Look here,” Rafalski pointed to a little cage, surrounded by a thick railing of barbed wire; from the semicircular opening, which was no larger than the bottom of a drinking-glass, glowed two small, keen black eyes.
“That’s a polecat, the cruellest and most bloodthirsty beast in creation.
You may not believe me, but it’s none the less true, that, in comparison with it, the lion and panther are as tame as lambs.
When a lion has eaten his thirty-four pounds or so of flesh, and is resting after his meal, he looks on good-humouredly at the jackals gorging on the remains of the banquet. But if that little brute gets into a hen-house it does not spare a single life.
There are no limits to its murderous instinct, and, besides, it is the wildest beast in the world and the one hardest to tame.
Fie, you little monster.”
Rafalski put his hand behind the bars, and at once, in the narrow outlet to the cage, an open jaw with sharp, white teeth was displayed.
The polecat accompanied its rapid movements backwards and forwards by a spiteful, cough-like sound.
“Have you ever seen such a nasty brute?
And yet I myself have fed it every day for a whole year.”
“Colonel Brehm” had now evidently forgotten Romashov’s business.
He took him from cage to cage, and showed him all his favourites, and he spoke with as much enthusiasm, knowledge, and tenderness of the animals’ tempers and habits, as if the question concerned his oldest and most intimate friends.
Rafalski’s collection of animals was really an extraordinarily large and fine one for a private individual to own, who was, moreover, compelled to live in an out-of-the-way and wretched provincial hole. There were rabbits, white rats, otters, hedgehogs, marmots, several venomous snakes in glass cases, ant-bears, several sorts of monkeys, a black Australian hare, and an exceedingly fine specimen of an Angora cat.
“Well, what do you say to this?” asked Rafalski, as he exhibited the cat. “Isn’t he charming?
And yet he does not stand high in my favour, for he is awfully stupid—much more stupid than our ordinary cats.”
Rafalski then exclaimed hotly: “Another proof of the little we know and how wrongly we value our ordinary domestic animals.
What do we know about the cat, horse, cow, and pig?
The pig is a remarkably clever animal.
You’re laughing, I see, but wait and you shall hear.” (Romashov had not shown the least signs of amusement.)
“Last year I had in my possession a wild boar which invented the following trick.