On re-entering his studio, which he found still cosy with the warmth of the day, Tony saw with great satisfaction that nothing was out of place and that James was asleep on his cushion; he went to bed himself and was soon sleeping the sleep of the just.

  About midnight he was awakened by the noise of clanking irons. You might have supposed the ghosts in one of Anne Radcliffe’s blood-curdling romances were dragging their chains up and down the studio. Tony did not believe much in phantoms, so, thinking some one was stealing his wood, he felt with his hand for an old damascened halberd decorated with a tuft, which hung on the wall among other trophies. He saw his mistake at once, and recognizing the origin of the disturbance, he ordered James to go to bed again. James obeyed, and Tony, with the longing for rest which is produced by a hard day’s work, resumed his broken slumbers. But in half an hour he was aroused again, this time by smothered cries. As Tony’s house was situated in an unfrequented street, he thought that somebody was being assassinated under his windows, jumped out of bed, took a pair of pistols, and opened the shutter. The night was calm, the street quiet. Not a sound broke the silence of the neighbourhood, except that low murmur which broods at all times over Paris, like the measured respiration of a sleeping giant. Then he shut his window, and found that the sighs of distress came from within the room itself. As he and James were alone in the room, and that he had himself nothing to complain of beyond being turned out of bed, he: went to James. James, for want of something to do, I had been amusing himself by walking round one of the legs of the table underneath which he had been put to sleep. But at the end of five or six turns his chain had got shortened up. James did not notice this, and continued his walk, so that he was at last brought up by his collar, and as he tried to go on forwards instead of turning back, each effort he made to get free increased the danger of strangulation. This was the cause of the moans which Tony had heard.

  Tony was quite ready to leave James as he was, as a punishment for his stupidity, but if he condemned James to be throttled, he condemned himself to the loss of his night’s rest. He therefore untwisted the chain as many times as James had twisted it, and James, glad to find his respiratory organs free, lay down humbly and quietly. Tony, for his part, did the same, hoping that nothing further would occur to trouble his rest until the morning. But here again he was disappointed, for James, having had his habits interfered with, could not close an eye, now he had already got through the eight hours’ sleep which was his usual quantum. The consequence was that in twenty minutes’ time Tony got out of bed again, but this time he did not take either a halberd or a pistol, but a cane.

  James saw at once what he was about, and hid himself under his cushion; but he was too late. Tony was merciless, and James received a punishment conscientiously proportionate to his crime. This calmed him down for the night, but then it was Tony’s turn to be unable to get to sleep, so he got up bravely, lit his lamp, and unable to paint by artificial light, began one of those exquisite woodcuts which have made him the king of engravers.

  It can easily be understood that, although Tony made a little money through his insomnia, things could not go on long in this fashion; so, as soon as daylight appeared he set himself seriously to consider if there were not some means of conciliating the necessity for repose with the exigencies of his purse. He was in the midst of his most abstruse calculations, when he saw entering his studio a pretty cat of the neighbourhood named Michette. James liked her because she let him do what he pleased to her, and she was fond of James because he used to hunt the fleas in her coat. Tony no sooner recollected this intimate friendship than he saw his way to turning it to his own advantage. The cat, with her winter fur, might very well take the place of a stove. Thinking thus, he took up the cat, who in ignorance of the duty she was to perform, made no resistance whatever, put her into the barred hutch belonging to James, pushed James in behind her, and went back to the studio to watch through the keyhole the effect of his arrangements.

  At first the two captives each tried every way of getting out which their diverse characters suggested to them. James jumped against the three walls of his cage one after the other, and then returned to shake the bars with his hands, then went through the same performance twenty times before he made up his mind that the procedure was quite hopeless. Michette stayed at first exactly where she had been put down without moving anything but her head, then, returning to the gratings, she rubbed gently against them first with one side then with the other, arching her back and stiffening her tail; then after turning twice, she tried, purring all the time, to get her head between each of the spaces between the bars; then when she saw that this was an impossibility, she gave three or four piteous mews; finally, when they produced no effect, she made herself a nest in the corner of the cage, rolled herself up in the hay, and soon appeared like an ermine muff looked at end on.

  As for James, he went on for perhaps a quarter of an hour, springing, jumping, and scolding; then, seeing that all his antics were unavailing, he went and plumped down in the opposite corner to that occupied by the cat. For a short time, warmed by the exercise he had taken, he sat still with his blood still in full circulation, but soon, as the cold gained on him, he began to shiver all over.

  Then it was that he began to notice his friend warmly wrapped up in her furry covering, and his egotistical instinct gave him the idea of the advantage he might gain from his forced imprisonment in company with his friend. Following up this plan, he crept up quietly to Michette, lay down close to her, passed one arm under her body, put the other into the upper opening of the natural muff which she made, wrapped his tail in a spiral round that of his neighbour, who kindly tucked both tails in between her legs, and this done, appeared perfectly reassured as to his future.

  Tony also was impressed with the same idea, and satisfied with what he had seen, he withdrew his eye from the keyhole, rang for his housekeeper, and desired her to serve every day for Michette food suited to her tastes in addition to the carrots, nuts, and potatoes which formed James’s ordinary diet.

  The housekeeper followed his orders exactly; and everything would have gone well with the daily routine of Michette’s and James’s establishment, had not the latter upset the whole arrangement by his gluttony. From the first day he noticed that there were certain new dishes served at the two meals which were brought him regularly, the one at nine in the morning, the other at five in the evening. As for Michette, she at once understood that the milk of the morning dish and the meat of the evening were intended for her, so that she commenced to eat the one and the other, perfectly satisfied with them, but still in that slightly disdainful manner which may often be noticed when well-bred cats are taking their dinners.

  At first, undecided as to the character of these comestibles, James let her feed alone; then when Michette, as became a well-mannered cat, left a little of her bread and milk on the plate, he came behind her tasted it, and finding it good, finished it off. The same thing occurred at dinner, James finding the meat sop equally to his taste, and he passed the night snugly, lying close up to Michette as usual, asking himself how it came to pass that he, a son of the house, should be fed on carrots, nuts, potatoes, and other uncooked vegetables, while a mere stranger was regaled on delicate and succulent viands.

  The result of his lying awake thinking was that James held Tony’s conduct to be supremely unfair, and he resolved to “restore things to their natural order by eating the cooked food himself and leaving Michette the carrots, the nuts, and the potatoes.

  So the next morning, when the housekeeper brought the two breakfasts, and Michette went purring to her saucer, James took her under his arm, turning her head away from the saucer, and held her thus as long as the saucer held anything; then, having finished the milk, and satisfied with his meal, he let Michette go, leaving her at liberty to make her breakfast off vegetables. Michette went about smelling the carrots, the nuts, and the potatoes; then, discontented with them, she returned, sadly mewing, and lay down near James. He, with his stomach comfortably plenished, at once busied himself with extending the soft warmth which he experienced in his abdominal regions to his paws and his tail, these extremities being much more sensitive to cold than all the rest of his body. At dinner the same manœuvres took place, but this time James was still more pleased with his change. of diet, and the meat-sop appeared to him as much superior to the milk as the milk itself was to the carrots, the nuts, and the potatoes. Thanks to this very comforting food and to Michette’s fur, James passed an excellent night, without paying the least attention in the world to the distress of poor Michette, who, with an empty and famishing stomach, mewed piteously from night to morning, while James snored like a canon in his stall and dreamt golden dreams. This went on for three days, to James’s great ‘delight and Michette’s great privation.

  At last, on the fourth day, when dinner was brought, Michette had not sufficient strength to make even a show of approaching the saucer, and she remained curled up in her corner, so that James, freer in his movements, since he was not obliged to control those of Michette, dined better than he had ever done. Having finished his dinner, he went, according to custom, and lay down near his cat, and, feeling that she was colder than usual, he embraced her the more closely with his paws and tail, scolding and grumbling because his warming pan was getting cold.

  The next day Michette was dead and James’s tail was frost-bitten. That morning Tony himself, uneasy at the increasing cold of the night, went, on rising, to visit his two prisoners. He found that James had fallen a victim to his own selfishness, and was chained to a corpse. He took up the dead and the living, one almost as still and cold as the other, and carried them into his studio. No amount of extra heat could revive Michette; but as James was only in a state of collapse, he gradually recovered the power of movement, his tail only remaining frozen. Moreover, as it had been frozen while wound about Michette’s tail, it remained in the form of a corkscrew, a shape unheard of and unknown among the simian race up to that day. This gave James an air of the most fantastic of fabulous monsters conceivable by the imagination. Three days later a thaw set in; moreover, the thaw brought about an event which we cannot pass over in silence, not because it was important in itself, but on account of the disastrous effect it had on James’s tail, which was already somewhat compromised by the events we have already detailed.

  Tony had received, during the frost, two lion skins, via Algiers, from one of his friends who was shooting in the Atlas Mountains. These two lion skins were sent fresh and uncured, and being frozen by the cold, had thus lost their peculiar smell. Tony had placed them in his room, meaning to have them properly tanned when the opportunity offered, and to decorate his studio with them. But, when the thaw came and everything, except James’s tail, thawed, the skin, becoming soft again, emitted the acrid, strong odour which warns all denizens of the wilds of the presence of their king, the lion. The consequence of this was that James, who, after meeting with his accident, had again been allowed to live in the studio, smelt, with the keen sense peculiar to his race, the terrible stench which gradually spread through the room, and he gave unmistakable signs of discomfort, these being at first attributed by Tony to the loss of use of one of his most necessary members.

  This condition of restlessness lasted for two days; for two whole days James, dwelling constantly on the same idea, sniffed every breath of air which stirred, jumped from chairs to tables and from tables to bookshelves, ate his food in haste, looking about him in terror all the time, drank in great gulps, nearly choking himself as he drank; in a word, was leading a life of dire alarm, when it chanced that I paid a call on Tony.

  As I was one of James’s great friends and never entered the studio without bringing him something good to eat, he ran up to me as soon as I appeared, to make sure that I had not forgotten him. Then the first thing that struck me as I offered him a Havana cigar, an article of which he was very fond, not to smoke, as our young men of fashion do, but simply to chew, as he had been taught by the sailors on board the “Roxelane “; the first thing, I repeat, I noticed was the extraordinary tail, which I did not remember at all, and the second was the nervous trembling and feverish excitement which I had never before seen him in. Tony gave me the explanation of the first phenomenon, but as to the cause of the second he was as ignorant as I was, and proposed to send for Thierry in order to consult him about it.

  I was leaving him, agreeing in the wisdom of the proposed course, when, in passing through the bedroom, I was struck with the wild beast kind of atmosphere emanating from it. I asked Tony what caused this, and he pointed to the two lion skins. I saw at once what was the matter; it was clear that the skins were the cause of James’s torments. Tony would not credit me, and as he still believed that James was seriously ill, I proposed a simple experiment to show that if James were really ill, it was from terror. This experiment was very easy to carry out. It was only to call his two studio lads, who were playing marbles during our temporary absence, to place on each a lion’s skin and to send them into the studio crawling on all fours and tricked out like the Nemean Hercules. Already the open door of the bedroom allowed the odour of lion to reach him stronger and more directly than before. James’s distress was visibly increasing. He sprang on to a set of steps, and, getting up to the very top, he turned his head towards us, sniffing the air and giving little screams of fear, showing that he smelt the approaching peril, and knew from which side to fear attack. In fact, after a few moments, one of the boys, duly caparisoned, went down on all fours and crawled towards the studio, followed closely by his comrade. James’s distress reached its height. As he saw the head of the first lion appear at the door, his distress became terror. A frenzied terror, mad, hopeless; the terror of the bird fascinated by the snake; a terror such as shatters all physical strength, paralyses all moral courage; fear such as ends in vertigo, causing the sky to swim before the eyes and the solid earth to rock, and from which a man, losing his every faculty, falls panting as in a dream, without even a cry. Such was the effect produced by the mere sight of the lions. They took a step towards James, and James fell prone from the top of his ladder.

  We ran to his aid; he had fainted. We revived him; he was tailless! The frost had made it as brittle as glass, and the fall had broken it short off!

  We had not intended to carry out the joke so far; so we sent the lion skins out to the store-room, and in five minutes the boys returned in their ordinary aspect and dress. As for James, he came to himself, with faint piteous cries, and as he sadly opened his eyes and recognized Tony, he threw his arms round his neck and hid his face in his breast.

  While this was going on, I was getting out a glass of claret to try and give James back a little of the courage he had lost. But James had no heart either to eat or drink; at the faintest noise he trembled-in every limb, and yet, little by little, while still sniffing the air occasionally, he began to perceive that the danger seemed to have passed away.

  Suddenly the door opened once more, and in one bound James was out of Tony’s arms and back on his ladder, but instead of the monsters he feared would enter by the open door, appeared his old friend, the cook, and the sight restored still further his sense of security. I took advantage of the happy moment to offer him a saucer of Bordeaux. He looked at it for a moment with an expression of distrust, looked at me again to be sure that it was the hand of a friend that offered him the tonic draught, and then wetted the tip of his tongue with it. He drew his tongue back within his mouth, as if he were doing me a favour, but at once found out, with the delicate sense of taste which characterized him, that the unknown liquid possessed an excellent aroma of its own. He then returned to the saucer for his own delectation, and after three or four laps his eyes became brighter, and he gave several low gurglings of pleasure, which showed that he was gradually recovering his ordinary joyous mood. Finally, after emptying the saucer, he got up on his hind legs, looked round for the bottle, saw where it was on the table, and ran to it with sufficient agility to show that his muscles were recovering their tone, and took it down, handling it much as a clarinet player does his instrument. He inserted his tongue into the neck, but unfortunately its length was insufficient by several inches for the task he set it. Then Tony, taking pity on him, poured out a second saucer of wine.

  This time James did not want any pressing; on the contrary, he put his mouth into it so quickly that he swallowed nearly as much through his nostrils as between his lips, and had to stop to sneeze. But this was only for a moment. James at once set to work again, and in a few minutes the saucer was as clean as if it had been wiped with a napkin. James, as the saucer became empty, began to show signs of-being in liquor; every trace of fear had gone and was replaced by a swaggering and vainglorious manner; he looked for the bottle again, which Tony had, after moving it, replaced on another table, and tried to walk on his hind legs towards it. But, finding that he was likely to be more secure if he had four supports, he dropped down at once on all-fours and began to walk, with the gravity of incipient drunkenness, towards the goal he had set himself to attain. He had got about two-thirds of the way towards the bottle, when, lying just before him, he came on his own tail.

  The sight, diverted his attention for a moment from his objective. He stopped and looked at it, wagging the little stump which was all that was left him, and, after a few seconds, he walked round it so as to make a more detailed examination; then he took it up and turned it over and over like a thing that roused his curiosity somewhat, smelt it, tasted it by just touching it with his teeth, and finding both smell and taste insipid, he threw it down with an expression of profound disdain, and resumed his route towards the bottle.