“ There is
everything
more than I can understand in this,” he
said at length.
said at length.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v24 - Sta to Tal
He stopped
and looked upon the place with an unpleasant interest. It was a
centre where several lanes intersected each other; and he looked
down them all, one after another, and held his breath to listen,
lest he should detect some galloping black things on the snow or
hear the sound of howling between him and the river.
He re-
membered his mother telling him the story and pointing out the
spot, while he was yet a child. His mother! If he only knew
where she lived, he might make sure at least of shelter. He
determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would go
and see her too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived at his
destination - his last hope for the night.
The house was quite dark, like its neighbors; and yet after a
few taps he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and
a cautious voice asking who was there. The poet named him-
self in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation,
the result. Nor had he to wait long. A window was suddenly
opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep.
## p. 13968 (#154) ##########################################
13968
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
ini! !
1
Villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and
had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch
admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the
waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from
cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he
was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But
the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a
few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely
used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. He could only
see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. He
had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it might be
easily broken into; and thither he betook himself promptly, enter-
taining himself on the way with the idea of a room still hot,
with a table still loaded with the remains of supper, where he
might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he should
issue on the morrow with an armful of valuable plate. He even
considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and
as he was calling the roll of his favorite dainties, roast fish pre-
sented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and
horror.
“I shall never finish that ballade,” he thought to himself; and
then, with another shudder at the recollection, “Oh, damn his fat
head! ” he repeated fervently, and spat upon the snow.
The house in question looked dark at first sight; but as Vil.
lon made a preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point
of attack, a little twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a
curtained window.
« The Devil! ” he thought. “People awake! Some student or
some saint, confound the crew! Can't they get drunk and lie in
bed snoring like their neighbors! What's the good of curfew,
and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's end in bell-
towers ? What's the use of day, if people sit up all night? The
gripes to them ! He grinned as he saw where his logic was
leading him. "Every man to his business, after all,” added he:
(and if they're awake, by the Lord, I may come by a supper
honestly for once, and cheat the Devil. ”
He went boldly to the door and knocked with an assured
hand. On both previous occasions, he had knocked timidly and
with some dread of attracting notice; but now when he had just
discarded the thought of a burglarious entry, knocking at a door
C
## p. 13969 (#155) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13969
1
:
11
TO
seemed a mighty simple and innocent proceeding. The sound of
his blows echoed through the house with thin, phantasmal rever-
berations, as though it were quite empty; but these had scarcely
died away before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts
were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no
guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall figure
of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon.
The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose
blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it joined a
pair of strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes sur-
rounded with delicate markings, and the whole face based upon a
thick white beard, boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was
by the light of a flickering hand-lamp, it looked perhaps nobler
than it had a right to do; but it was a fine face, honorable rather
than intelligent, strong, simple, and righteous.
“You knock late, sir,” said the old man in resonant, courteous
tones.
Villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology:
at a crisis of this sort, the beggar was uppermost in him, and the
man of genius hid his head with confusion.
“You are cold,” repeated the old man, “and hungry? Well,
And he ordered him into the house with a noble
enough gesture.
"Some great seigneur,” thought Villon, as his host, setting
down the lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the
bolts once more into their places.
«You will pardon me if I go in front,” he said, when this
was done; and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apart-
ment, warmed with a pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp
hanging from the roof. It was very bare of furniture: only some
gold plate on a sideboard; some folios; and a stand of armor be-
tween the windows. Some smart tapestry hung upon the walls,
representing the crucifixion of our Lord in one piece, and in
another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running
stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.
“Will you seat yourself,” said the old man, “and forgive me
if I leave you? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are
to eat I must forage for you myself. ”
No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the
chair on which he had just seated himself, and began examining
the room with the stealth and passion of a cat. He weighed the
XXIV–874
step in. ”
(
(
(
## p. 13970 (#156) ##########################################
13970
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
gold flagons in his hand, opened all the folios, and investigated the
arms upon the shield, and the stuff with which the seats were
lined. He raised the window curtains, and saw that the windows
were set with rich stained glass, in figures, so far as he could see,
of martial import. Then he stood in the middle of the room,
drew a long breath, and retaining it with puffed cheeks, looked
round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impress every
feature of the apartment on his memory.
“Seven pieces of plate," he said. “If there had been ten, I
would have risked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so
help me all the saints! »
And just then hearing the old man's tread returning along
the corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began humbly toast-
ing his wet legs before the charcoal pan.
His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug
of wine in the other. He set down the plate upon the table,
motioning Villon to draw in his chair; and going to the side-
board, brought back two goblets, which he filled.
“I drink your better fortune,” he said, gravely touching Vil-
lon's cup with his own.
« To our better acquaintance,” said the poet, growing bold. A
mere man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy
of the old seigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter:
he had made mirth for great lords before now, and found them
as black rascals as himself. And so he devoted himself to the
viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man, leaning back-
ward, watched him with steady, curious eyes.
“You have blood on your shoulder, my man,” he said.
Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he
left the house. He cursed Montigny in his heart.
“It was none of my shedding,” he stammered.
“I had not supposed so," returned his host quietly.
"
"A
brawl ? »
“Well, something of that sort,” Villon admitted with a qua-
ver.
"Perhaps a fellow murdered ? »
“Oh no, not murdered,” said the poet, more and more con-
fused. "It was all fair play — murdered by accident.
I had no
hand in it, God strike me dead! ” he added fervently.
“One rogue the fewer, I daresay,” observed the master of
the house.
>
>>
## p. 13971 (#157) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13971
»
(
»
»
.
»
(
“You may dare to say that,” agreed Villon, infinitely relieved.
"As big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He
turned up his toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look
at.
I daresay you've seen dead men in your time, my lord ? ”
he added, glancing at the armor.
Many,” said the old man. “I have followed the wars, as
you imagine. ”
Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken
up again.
“Were any of them bald ? ” he asked.
“Oh yes, and with hair as white as mine. ”
“I don't think I should mind the white so much," said Villon.
« His was red. ” And he had a return of his shuddering and
tendency to laughter, which he drowned with a great draught
of wine. «I'm a little put out when I think of it,” he went on.
“I knew him — damn him! And then the cold gives a man fan-
cies - or the fancies give a man cold, I don't know which. ”
"Have you any money ? ” asked the old man.
"I have one white,” returned the poet, laughing. “I got it
out of a dead jade's stocking in a porch. She was as dead as
Cæsar, poor wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon
sticking in her hair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves
and wenches and poor rogues like me. ”
"I," said the old man, am Enguerrand de la Feuillée, sei-
gneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you
be ? "
Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. “I am called
Francis Villon,” he said, “a poor Master of Arts of this univer-
sity. I know some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chan-
sons, ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of
wine. I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably die
upon the gallows. I may add, my lord, that from this night for-
ward I am your Lordship's very obsequious servant to command. ”
“No servant of mine,” said the knight: “my guest for this
evening, and no more. ”
"A very grateful guest,” said Villon politely; and he drank
in dumb show to his entertainer.
“You are shrewd,” began the old man, tapping his forehead,
very shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk: and yet you
take a small piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is
it not a kind of theft ? »
(C
## p. 13972 (#158) ##########################################
13972
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The poor
“It is a kind of theft much practiced in the wars, my lord. ”
« The wars
are the field of honor,” returned the old man
proudly. “There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights
in the name of his lord the king, his Lord God, and all their
Lordships the holy saints and angels. ”
“Put it,” said Villon, “that I were really a thief: should I not
play my life also, and against heavier odds ? »
“For gain but not for honor. ”
“Gain ? ) repeated Villon with a shrug. “Gain!
fellow wants supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a
campaign. Why, what are all these requisitions we hear so much
about? If they are not gain to those who take them, they are
loss enough to the others. The men-at-arms drink by a good
fire, while the burgher bites his nails to buy them wine and
wood. I have seen a good many plowmen swinging on trees
about the country; ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very
poor figure they made: and when I asked some one how all these
came to be hanged, I was told it was because they could not
scrape together enough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms. ”
"These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born
must endure with constancy. It is true that some captains drive
over-hard: there are spirits in every rank not easily moved by
pity; and indeed many follow arms who are no better than brig-
ands. ”
“You see,” said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier
from the brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand
with circumspect manners ? I steal a couple of mutton chops,
without so much as disturbing people's sleep; the farmer grum-
bles a bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what remains.
You come up blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the
a
whole sheep, and beat the farmer pitifully into the bargain. I
have no trumpet; I am only Tom, Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue
and a dog, and hanging's too good for me — with all my heart:
but just ask the farmer which of us he prefers; just find out
which of us he lies awake to curse on cold nights. ”
«Look at us two,” said his Lordship. "I am old, strong, and
honored. If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds
would be proud to shelter me. Poor people would go out and
pass the night in the streets with their children, if I merely
hinted that I wished to be alone. And I find you up, wandering
homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside!
(
(C
## p. 13973 (#159) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13973
-
some
I fear no man and nothing: I have seen you tremble and lose
countenance at a word. I wait God's summons contentedly in
my own house; or if it please the King to call me out again,
upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows,- a rough,
swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference
between these two ? ”
"As far as to the moon,” Villon acquiesced.
»
“But if I had
been born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar
Francis, would the difference have been any the less ? Should not
I have been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would
not you have been groping for farthings in the snow? Should
not I have been the soldier, and you the thief?
"A thief? ” cried the old man. “I a thief! If you understood
your words, you would repent them. ”
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable im-
pudence. “If your Lordship had done me the honor to follow
my argument! ” he said.
"I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence,”
said the knight. « Learn to curb your tongue when you speak
with old and honorable men, or one hastier than I may
reprove you in a sharper fashion. ” And he rose and paced the
lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy.
Villon surreptitiously refilled his cup, and settled himself more
comfortably in the chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head
upon one hand and the elbow against the back of the chair. He
was now replete and warm; and he was in no wise frightened for
his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible between
two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in a
very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of
a safe departure on the morrow.
“Tell me one thing,” said the old man, pausing in his walk.
"Are you really a thief ? "
"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet.
“My lord, I am. ”
"You are very young,” the knight continued.
"I should never have been so old,” replied Villon, showing
his fingers, “if I had not helped myself with these ten talents.
They have been my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers. ”
« You may still repent and change. ”
"I repent daily,” said the poet. « There are few people
more given to repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let
## p. 13974 (#160) ##########################################
13974
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
somebody change my circumstances. A man must continue to
eat, if it were only that he may continue to repent. ”
«The change must begin in the heart,” returned the old man
solemnly.
“My dear lord,” answered Villon, “do you really fancy that I
steal for pleasure ? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work
or of danger. My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I
must eat, I must drink, I must mix in society of some sort.
What the Devil! Man is not a solitary animal - Cui Deus fæmi-
—
nam tradit. Make me king's pantler — make me abbot of St.
Denis- make me bailly of the Patatrac; and then I shall be
changed indeed. But as long as you leave me the poor scholar
Francis Villon, without a farthing, why, of course I remain the
same. ”
“The grace of God is all-powerful. ”
“I should be a heretic to question it,” said Francis. "It has
made you lord of Brisetout and bailly of the Patatrac: it has
given me nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten
toes upon my hands. May I help myself to wine? I thank you
respectfully. By God's grace, you have a very superior vintage. ”
The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind
his back. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind
about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon
had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps
his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning:
but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the
young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up
his mind to drive him forth again into the street.
“ There is everything more than I can understand in this,” he
said at length. “Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the Devil
has led you very far astray; but the Devil is only a very weak
spirit before God's truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of
true honor, like darkness at morning. Listen to me once more.
I learned long ago that a gentleman should live chivalrously and
lovingly to God, and the king, and his lady; and though I have
seen many strange things done, I have still striven to command
my ways upon that rule. It is not only written in all noble his-
tories, but in every man's heart, if he will take care to read.
You speak of food and wine, and I know very well that hunger
is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other
wants: you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men,
»
## p. 13975 (#161) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13975
of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not
very wise,- and yet I think I am,— but you seem to me like
one who has lost his way and made a great error in life. You
are attending to the little wants, and you have totally forgot-
ten the great and only real ones, like a man who should be doc-
toring toothache on the Judgment Day. For such things as
honor and love and faith are not only nobler than food and
drink, but indeed I think we desire them more, and suffer more
sharply for their absence. I speak to you as I think you will
most easily understand me. Are you not, while careful to fill
your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which
spoils the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually
wretched ? »
Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonizing. “You
think I have no sense of honor! ” he cried. “I'm poor enough,
God knows! It's hard to see rich people with their gloves, and
you blowing in your hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing,
although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had as many as
I, perhaps you would change your tune. Any way I'm a thief - -
make the most of that; but I'm not a devil from hell, God
strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of my
own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long,
as if it was a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural
to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you
here, how long have I been in this room with you ? Did you not
tell me you were alone in the house? Look at your gold plate!
You're strong, if you like, but you're old and unarmed, and I
have my knife. What did I want but a jerk of the elbow, and
here would have been you with the cold steel in your bowels, and
there would have been me linking in the streets with an armful
of golden cups! Did you suppose I hadn't wit enough to see that ?
And I scorned the action. There are your damned goblets, as
safe as in a church; there are you, with your heart ticking as
good as new; and here am I, ready to go out again as poor as I
came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! And
you think I have no sense of honor — God strike me dead! »
The old man stretched out his right arm. “I will tell you
what you are,” he said.
»
« You are a rogue, my man; an impu-
dent and black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an
hour with you. Oh! believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And
you have eaten and drunk at my table. But now I am sick at
## p. 13976 (#162) ##########################################
13976
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1
1
your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be
off to his roost. Will you go before, or after ? »
“Which you please,” returned the poet, rising. "I believe you
.
to be strictly honorable. ” He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I
wish I could add you were intelligent,” he went on, knocking
on his head with his knuckles. "Age! age! the brains stiff and
rheumatic. ”
The old man preceded him, from a point of self-respect; Vil-
lon followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.
"God pity you,” said the lord of Brisetout at the door.
"Good-by, papa,” returned Villon with a yawn.
thanks for the cold mutton. ”
The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over
the white roofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the
day. Villon stood and heartily stretched himself in the middle of
the road.
"A very dull old gentleman,” he thought. “I wonder what
his goblets may be worth. ”
« Many
## p. 13977 (#163) ##########################################
13977
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
(1828-)
M
ILLIAM JAMES Stillman is prominent among those American
writers whose lives are spent for the most part away from
the country of their birth. His writings partake to a de-
gree of the character of this voluntary exile; being somewhat desul-
tory, concerned with what is of uppermost importance at the moment,
– whether a search for a rare intaglio in forgotten little streets of
Rome, or an insurrection in Crete, whither the author has wandered,
or a discussion concerning the identity of an exhumed Greek statue.
Yet these seemingly ephemeral magazine articles are of a true liter-
ary quality, witnessing to deep and fine perceptions of art and life
underneath their surface carelessness. Mr. Stillman began his life as
an artist, but was drawn by its natural currents into the career of a
writer. Born in Schenectady in 1828, he was graduated from Union
College in 1848; beginning soon after the study of painting under
F. E. Church. He was for a time a resident artist in New York city,
where he established with Mr. Durand the first art journal ever pub-
lished in this country, the Crayon. After the year 1870 he devoted
himself, however, exclusively to literature; yet his art training proved
invaluable to him in his office of critic, enabling him to understand
and to formulate the instincts of his artistic temperament. From
1861 to 1865 he was United States consul in Rome; holding the same
office in Crete from 1865 to 1869. He was therefore a witness of the
insurrection in that island, concerning which he wrote the volume
entitled (The Cretan Insurrection. ' For many years he was a regu-
lar staff correspondent of the London Times, being stationed first at
Athens, and afterward at Rome; and for another long period he was
art critic of the New York Evening Post. His environment has
been peculiarly well adapted to his temperament: a fierce, free soul,
rejoicing in beauty and battle, he is equally at home in the still art
galleries of Florence and Rome, and in scenes of strife. His apprecia-
tion of art is subtle and intimate, in the nature of instinct, as is also
his appreciation of nature; though in this he is more mystical, more
deeply touched with the invisible soul of things. He was one of the
first artists who penetrated the Adirondacks, feeling to the uttermost
the almost oppressive beauty of the wilderness. His simple, sensuous,
and passionate love of art leads him directly back to Titian.
## p. 13978 (#164) ##########################################
13978
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
«In our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher develop-
ment of intellectual art; and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach
further towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he did,
no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away, its unreasoning
faith, its wanton instinct, - reveling in art like children in the sunshine, and
rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and glory which overlay creation,
unconscious of effort, indifferent to science,- all gone with the fairies, the
saints, the ecstatic visions which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still
reflecting the glory, as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympa-
thetic souls kindling into like glow with faint perception of what had passed
from the whole world beside: Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Rey-
nolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix kept the line of color, now at last
utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out of
joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the greater sub-
stance: we kindle with the utilities, and worship the aspiring spirit of a com-
mon humanity; we banish the saints from our souls and the gewgaws from
our garments, and walk clothed and in our right mind:
but we have
lost the art of painting; for when Eugène Delacroix died, the last painter
(visible above the man) who understood art as Titian understood it, and
painted with such art as Veronese's, passed away, leaving no pupil or suc-
cessor.
It is as when the last scion of a kingly race dies in some alien land. ”
.
Again he writes of the Venetian painters: “Their lives developed
their instincts and their instincts their art;” and of a modern paint-
ing: It is in the minor key of that lovely Eastern color-work such
as we see in the Persian carpets, and to me always something weird
and mysterious and touching, like the tones of an Æolian harp, or
the greeting of certain sad-voiced children touched by the shadow of
death before their babyhood is gone. ” These passages indicate an
unusual degree of sensitiveness to both the spirit and matter of art
products, — a sensitiveness especially marked in Mr. Stillman's articles
on the Old Italian Masters) contributed to the Century Magazine.
The side of his nature which is congenial with struggle is exhib-
ited in high light in The Cretan Insurrection); and Herzegovina,'
a book dealing with the insurrection of 1875-76 in that country. Re-
garding the Eastern question he writes: «The interests of civiliza-
tion — of Europe entire — demand its [the Mussulman government's]
replacement by a new government which shall be amenable to those
interests and progress.
Having once admitted the necessity
for its cessation, we shall more quickly find an accord over the man-
ner of replacing it. It is in attempting to reform it that the dan-
ger lies. ” Besides his various magazine articles on subjects of art
or politics, and the two books already mentioned, Mr. Stillman has
published (Turkish Rule and Turkish Warfare,' (The Acropolis of
Athens, and “On the Track of Ulysses. '
## p. 13979 (#165) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13979
BILLY AND HANS: A TRUE HISTORY
°
Sº
From the Century Magazine: Copyright 1897, by the Century Company
LONG as the problem of the possession of the capacity of
reasoning by the animals of lower rank than man in crea-
tion is investigated through those of their species that have
been domesticated, and in which the problem of heredity has be-
come complicated with human influence, and the natural instincts
with an artificial development of their faculties, no really valu-
able conclusions can be arrived at. It is only when we ke the
native gifts of an animal under investigation, at least without the
intervention of any trace of heredity and of what under teaching
may become a second nature, that we can estimate in scientific
exactitude the measure of intelligence of one of the lower ani-
mals. The ways of a dog or cat are the result of innumerable
generations of ancestors reared in intimate relations with the
human master mind. As subjects for investigation into the ques-
tion of animal character, they are therefore misleading, and the
wild creature must be taken. And so far as my observation
goes, the squirrel, of all the small animals, shows at once the
most character and the most affection; and I believe that the
history of two that I have lately lost has a dramatic quality
which makes it worth recording.
In my favorite summer resort at the lower edge of the Black
Forest, the quaint old town of Lauffenburg, a farmer's boy one
day brought me a young squirrel for sale. He was a tiny creat-
ure, probably not yet weaned: a variation on the ordinary type
of the European Sciurus (Sciurus vulgaris), gray instead of the
usual red, and with black tail and ears; so that at first, as he
contented himself with drinking his milk and sleeping, I was
not sure that he was not a dormouse. But examination of the
paws, with their delicate anatomy, so marvelously like the human
hand in their flexibility and handiness, and the graceful curl of
his tail, settled the question of genus; and mindful of my boy-
hood and early pets, I bought him and named him Billy. From
the first moment that he became my companion he gave me
his entire confidence, and accepted his domestication without the
least indication that he considered it captivity. There is gener-
ally a short stage of mute rebellion in wild creatures before
they come to accept us entirely as their friends,-a longing for
freedom which makes precautions against escape necessary. This
## p. 13980 (#166) ##########################################
13980
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
never appeared in Billy: he came to me for his bread and milk,
and slept in my pocket from the first, and enjoyed being caressed
as completely as if he had been born under my roof. No other
animal is so clean in its personal habits as the squirrel when in
health; and Billy soon left the basket which cradled his infancy,
and habitually slept under a fold of my bed-cover, sometimes
making his way to my pillow and sleeping by my cheek: and he
never knew what a cage was except when traveling, and even
then for the most part he slept in my pocket. He went with
me to the table d'hôte, and when invited out sat on the edge of
the table and ate his bit of bread with a decorum that made
him the admiration of all the children in the hotel, so that he
accompanied me in all my journeys. He acquired a passion for
tea sweet and warm, and to my indulgence of this taste I fear I
owe his early loss. He had full liberty to roam in my room: but
his favorite resort was my work-table when I was at work;
and when his diet became nuts he used to hide them among
my books, and then come to hunt them out again, like a child
with its toys. I sometimes found my typewriter stopped, and
discovered a hazelnut in the works. And when tired of his hide-
and-seek he would come to the edge and nod to me, to indicate
that he wished to go into my pocket or be put down to run
about the room; and he soon made a limited language of move-
ments of his head to tell me his few wants,- food, drink, to
sleep, or to take a climb on the highest piece of furniture in the
room. He was from the beginning devoted to me, and naturally
became like a spoiled child. If I gave him an uncracked nut,
he rammed it back into my hand to be cracked for him with
irresistible persistence. I did as many parents do, and indulged
him, to his harm and my own later grief. I could not resist
that coaxing nodding, and gave him what he wished, — tea when
I had mine, and cracked his nuts, to the injury of his teeth, I
was told.
In short, I made him as happy as I knew how.
Early in my possession of him I cast about if I might find
in the neighborhood a companion of the other sex for him; and
when finally I heard that in a village just across the Rhine there
was a captive squirrel for sale, I sent my son with orders to buy
it if a female. It turned out to be a male; but he bought it
just the same, - a bright, active, and quite unreconciled prisoner,
two months older than Billy, of the orthodox red, just tamed
enough to take his food from the hand, but accustomed to be
-
## p. 13981 (#167) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13981
kept with his neck in a collar, to which there was attached a
fathom of light dog-chain. He refused with his utmost energy
to be handled; and as it was not possible to keep the little
creature in the torture of that chain,- for I refuse to keep a
caged creature,- I cut the collar and turned him loose in my
chamber, where he kept involuntary company with Billy. The
imprisonment of the half-tamed but wholly unreconciled animal
was perhaps as painful to me as to him, and my first impulse
was to turn him out into his native forest to take his chances of
life; but I considered that he was already too far compromised
with Mother Nature for this to be prudent: for having learned
to take his food from a man, the first attack of hunger was sure
to drive him to seek it where he had been accustomed to find it;
and the probable consequence was being knocked on the head by
a village boy, or at best re-consigned to a worse captivity than
mine. He had no mother, and he was still little more than a
baby; so I decided to keep him and make him as happy as he
would let me. His name was Hans. Had I released him as I
thought to do, I had saved myself one sorrow, and this history
had lost its interest.
After a little strangeness, the companionship between the two
became as perfect as the utterly diverse nature of their squirrel.
ships would permit. Billy was social and as friendly as a little
dog, Hans always a little morose and not over-ready to accept
familiarities; Billy always making friendly advances to his corn-
panion, which were at first unnoticed, and afterward only sub-
mitted to with equanimity. It was as if Billy had accepted the
position of the spoiled child of the family, and Hans reluctantly
that of an elder brother who is always expected to make way
for the pet and baby of the house. Billy was full of fun, and
delighted to tease Hans, when he was sleeping, by nibbling at
his toes and ears, biting him playfully anywhere he could get at
him; and Hans, after a little indignant bark, would bolt away
and find another place to sleep in. As they both had the free-
dom of my large bedroom, - the door of which was carefully
guarded, as Hans was always on the lookout for a chance to bolt
out into the unknown, they had plenty of room for climbing,
and comparative freedom; and after a little time Hans adopted
Billy's habit of passing the night in the fold of my bed-rug, and
even of nestling with Billy near my head. Billy was from the
beginning a bad sleeper, and in his waking moments his standing
## p. 13982 (#168) ##########################################
13982
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
amusement was nibbling at Hans, who used to break out of his
sleep and go to the foot of the bed to lie; but never for long,
for he always worked his way back to Billy, and nestled down
again. When I gave Hans a nut, Billy would wait for him to
crack it, and deliberately take it out of his jaws and eat it, - to
which Hans submitted without a fight, or a snarl even, though
at first he held on a little; but the good-humor and caressing
ways of Billy were as irresistible with Hans as with us, and I
never knew him to retaliate in any way.
No two animals of the most domesticated species could have
differed in disposition more than these. During the first phase
of Hans's life he never lost his repugnance to being handled,
while Billy delighted in being fondled. The European squirrel is
by nature one of the most timid of animals, even more so than
the hare, being equaled in this respect only by the exquisite
flying-squirrel of America; and when it is frightened, as for in-
stance when held fast in any way or in a manner that alarms it,
it will bite even the most familiar hand, the feeling being appar-
ently that it is necessary to gnaw away the ligature which holds
it. Of course, considering the irreconcilability of Hans to captiv-
ity, I was obliged, much against my will, to get a cage for him
to travel in; and I made a little dark chamber in the upper part
of a wire bird-cage in which the two squirrels were put for trav-
eling: During the first journeys the motion of the carriage or
railway train made Hans quite frantic, while Billy took it with
absolute unconcern. On stopping at a hotel, they were invariably
,
released in my room.
Arriving at Rome, I fitted up a deep window recess for their
home: but they always had the run of the study, and Hans,
while never losing sight of a door left ajar, and often escaping
into adjoining rooms, made himself apparently happy in his new
quarters, climbing the high curtains, racing along the curtain
poles, and at intervals making excursions to the top of the book-
case; though to both, the table at which I was at work soon
became the favorite resort, and their antics there were as amus-
ing as those of a monkey. Toward the end of the year Billy
developed an indolent habit, which I now can trace to the disease
that finally took him from us; but he never lost his love for my
writing-table, where he used to lie and watch me at my work by
the hour. Hans soon learned to climb down from their window
bench, and up my legs and arms to the writing-table, and down
## p. 13983 (#169) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13983
again by the same road when he was tired of his exercises with
the pencils or penholders he found there, or of hunting out the
nuts which he had hidden the day before among the books and
papers; but I never could induce him to stay in my pocket with
Billy, who on cold days preferred sleeping there, as the warmth
of my body was more agreeable than that of their fur-lined nest.
There was something uncanny in Billy,-a preternatural animal
intelligence which one sees, generally, only in animals that have
had training and heredity to work on. He soon learned to indi-
cate to me his few wants: and one of the things which will never
fade from my memory is the pretty way in which he used to
come to the edge of the window bench and nod his head to me
to show that he wished to be taken; for he soon learned that it
was easier to call to me and be taken than it was to climb down
the curtain and run across the room to me. He nodded and
wagged his head until I went to him, and his flexible nose
wrinkled into the grotesque semblance of a smile, with all the
seductive entreaty an animal could show; and somehow we
learned to understand each other so well that I rarely mistook
his want, were it water or food, or to climb, or to get on my
table, or rest in my pocket. Notwithstanding all the forbearance
which Hans showed for his mischievous ways, and the real
attachment he had for Billy, Billy clearly preferred me to his
companion; and when during the following winter I was attacked
by bronchitis, and was kept in my bedroom for several days,
after a day of my absence my wife, going into the study, found
him in an extraordinary state of excitement, which she said
resembled hysterics, and he insisted on being taken. It occurred
to her that he wanted me, and she brought him up-stairs to my
bedroom, when he immediately pointed to be taken to me; and
as she was curious to see what he would do, and stopped at the
threshold, he bit her hand gently to spur her forward to the bed.
When put on the bed, he nestled down in the fur of my bed-
cover, perfectly contented. As long as I kept my room he was
brought up every day, and passed the day on my bed. At other
times the two slept together in an open box lined with fur,-
or what they seemed greatly to delight in, a wisp of new-mown
hay,- or the bend of the window-curtain, so nestled together
that it was hard to distinguish whether there were one or two.
Some instincts of the woods they were long losing the use of,
as the habit of often changing their sleeping-places. I provided
## p. 13984 (#170) ##########################################
13984
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
them with several, of which the ultimate favorite was the bag of
the window curtain; but sometimes when Billy was missing, he
was found in my waste-paper basket, and even in the drawer of
my typewriter desk, asleep. In their native forests these squir-
rels have this habit of changing their nests; and the mother
will carry her little ones from one tree to another to hide their
resting-place, as if she suspected the mischievous plans of the
boys to hunt them — and probably she does. But the nest I
made my squirrels in their traveling-carriage, of hard cardboard
well lined with fur, suited the hiding and secluding ways of
Hans for a long time best of all; and he abandoned it entirely
only when he grew so familiar as not to care to hide. They also
lost the habit of hiding their surplus food when they found food
never wanting
When the large cones of the stone-pine came into the market
late in the autumn, I got some to give them a taste of fresh
nuts; and the frantic delight with which Hans recognized the
relation to his national fir-cones, far away and slight as it was,
was touching. He raced around the huge and impenetrable
cone, tried it from every side, gnawed at the stem and then at
the apex, but in vain. Yet he persisted. The odor of the pine
seemed an intoxication to him; and the eager satisfaction with
which he split the nuts, once taken out for him, even when Billy
was watching him to confiscate them when open, was very inter-
esting: for he had never seen the fruit of the stone-pine, and
knew only the tiny things which the fir of the Northern forest
bears; and to extricate the pine-nuts from their strong and hard
cones was impossible to his tiny teeth. As for Billy, he was
content to sit and look on while Hans gnawed, and to take the
kernel from him when he had split the nut; and the charming
bonhomie with which he appropriated it, and with which Hans
submitted to the piracy, was a study.
The friendship between the two was very interesting: for
while Billy generally preferred being with me to remaining on
his window bench with Hans, he had intervals when he insisted
on being with Hans; while the latter seemed to care for nothing
but Billy, and would not remain long away from him willingly
as long as Billy lived. When the summer came again, being
unable to leave them with servants or the housekeeper, I put
them in their cage once more, and took them back to Lauffen-
burg for my vacation. Hans still retained his impatience at the
## p. 13985 (#171) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13985
an
confinement even of my large chamber, and with a curious dili-
gence watched the door for a crack to escape by, though in all
other respects he seemed happy and at home and perfectly
familiar; and though always in this period of his life shy with
strangers, he climbed over me with perfect nonchalance. Billy,
on the contrary, refused freedom; and when I took him out into
his native woods he ran about a little, and came back to find his
place in my pocket as naturally as if it had been his birth-nest.
But the apparent yearning of Hans for liberty was to me
exquisite pain. He would get up on the window-bench, looking
out one way on the rushing Rhine, and the other on the stretch-
ing pine forest, and stand with one paw on the sash and the
other laid across his breast, and turn his bright black eyes from
one to the other view incessantly, and with a look of passionate
eagerness which made my heart ache. If I could have found a
friendly park where he could have been turned loose in security
from hunger and the danger of hunting boys and the snares
which beset a wild life, I would have released him at once. I
never so felt the wrong and mutual pain of imprisonment of
God's free creatures as then with poor Hans, whose independent
spirit had always made him the favorite of the two with my
wife; and now that the little drama of their lives is over, and
Nature has taken them both to herself again, I can never think
of this eager little creature with his passionate outlook over the
Rhineland without tears. But in the Rhineland, under the pre-
text that they eat off the top twigs of the pine-trees and spoil
their growth, they hunt the poor things with a malignancy that
makes it a wonder that there is one left to be captured; and
Hans's chance of life in those regions was the very least a
creature could have. As to the pretext of the destruction of
the pine-tops, I have looked at them in every part of the Black
Forest that I have visited, and have never been able to discover
one tree-top spoiled. It is possible that the poor little creatures,
when famished, may eat the young twigs of trees; but in my
opinion the accusation is only the case of the wolf who wants an
excuse to eat the lamb. Hans and Billy were both fond of roses
and lettuce; but nothing else in the way of vegetation, other
than fruits and nuts, would they eat. But when I remember
that in my boyhood I have joined in squirrel hunts, and that my
murderous lead has often crashed through their tender frames, I
have no right to cast stones at the Germans, but with pain and
humiliation remember my cruelty. I would sooner be myself
.
XXIV-875
## p. 13986 (#172) ##########################################
13986
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
shot than shoot another. I feel so keenly their winsome grace
when I can watch them in freedom that I cannot draw the line
between them and myself, except that they are worthier of life
than I am. The evolutionists tell us that we are descended from
some common ancestor of the monkey. It may be so: and if, as
has been conjectured by one scientist, that was the lemur, which
is the link between the monkey and the squirrel, I should not
object; but I hope that we branched off at the Sciurus, for I
would willingly be the far-off cousin of my little pets.
But before leaving Rome for my summer vacation at Lauff-
enburg, the artificial habits of life, and my ignorance of the con-
ditions of squirrel health, began to work their usual consequences.
Billy had begun to droop, and symptoms of some organic malady
appeared; though he grew more and more devoted to me, his
ambition to climb and disport himself diminished: and it was
clear that his civilized life had done for him what it does for
many of us,- shortened his existence.
shortened his existence. He never showed signs
of pain, but grew more sluggish, and would come to me and rest,
licking my hand like a little dog, and was as happy so as his
nature could show. They both hailed again with greedy enthusi-
asm the first nuts, fresh and crisp, and the first peaches, which I
went to Basel to purchase for them; and what the position per-
mitted me I supplied them with, with a guilty feeling that I
could never atone for the loss of what they lost with freedom. I
tried to make them happy in any way with my limited abilities;
and, the vacation over, we went back to Rome and the fresh
pine-cones and their window niche.
But there Billy grew rapidly worse, and I realized that the
tragedy of our little ménage was coming. He grew apathetic;
and would lie with his great black eyes looking into space, as if
in a dream. It became tragedy for me: for the symptoms were
the same as those of a dear little fellow who had first rejoiced
my father's heart in the years gone by, and who lies in an old
English church-yard; whose last hours I watched lapsing into
the eternity beyond, painlessly, and he, thank God! understanding
nothing of the great change. When he could no longer speak,
he beckoned me to lay my head on the same pillow. He died
of blood-poisoning, as I found after Billy's death that he also
did; and the identity of the symptoms (of the cause of which I
then understood nothing) brought back the memory of that last
solitary night when my boy passed from under my care, and his
eyes, large and dark like Billy's, grew dim and vacant like his.
## p. 13987 (#173) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13987
Billy, too, clung the closer to me as the end approached; and
when the apathy left him almost no recognition of things around,
he would grasp one of my fingers with his two paws, and lick it
till he tired. It was clear that death was at hand: and on the
last afternoon I took him out into the grounds of the Villa
Borghese to lie in the sunshine, and get perhaps a moment of
return to Mother Nature; but when I put him on the grass in
the warm light he only looked away into vacancy, and lay still,
and after a little dreamily indicated to me to take him up again:
and I remembered that on the day before his death I had car-
ried Russie into the green fields, hoping they would revive him
for one breathing-space, for I knew that death was on him; and
he lay and looked off beyond the field and flowers; and now he
almost seemed to be looking out of dear little Billy's eyes.
I went out to walk early the next morning, and when I re-
turned I found Billy dead, still warm, and sitting up in his box
of fresh hay in the attitude of making his toilet; for to the last
he would wash his face and paws, and comb out his tail, even
when his strength no longer sufficed for more than the mere
form of it. I am not ashamed to say that I wept like a child.
The dear little creature had been to me not merely a pet to
amuse my vacant hours,— though many of those most vacant
which sleepless nights bring had been diverted by his pretty
ways as he shared my bed, and by his singular devotion to me,
but he had been as a door open into the world of God's lesser
creatures, an apostle of pity and tenderness for all living things,
and his memory stands on the eternal threshold nodding and
beckoning to me to enter in and make part of the creation I had
ignored till he taught it to me; so that while life lasts I can no
longer inflict pain or death upon the least of God's creatures. If
it be true that “to win the secret of a weed's plain heart” gives
the winner a clue to the hidden things of the spiritual life, how
much more the conscient and reciprocal love which Billy and I
bore, and I could gladly say still bear, each other, must widen
the sphere of spiritual sympathy; which, widening still, reaches at
last the eternal source of all life and love, and finds indeed that
one touch of nature makes all things kin. Living and dying,
Billy has opened to me a window into the universe, of the
existence of which I had no suspicion; his little history is an
added chamber to that eternal mansion into which my constant
and humble faith assures me that I shall some time enter; he
»
## p.
and looked upon the place with an unpleasant interest. It was a
centre where several lanes intersected each other; and he looked
down them all, one after another, and held his breath to listen,
lest he should detect some galloping black things on the snow or
hear the sound of howling between him and the river.
He re-
membered his mother telling him the story and pointing out the
spot, while he was yet a child. His mother! If he only knew
where she lived, he might make sure at least of shelter. He
determined he would inquire upon the morrow; nay, he would go
and see her too, poor old girl! So thinking, he arrived at his
destination - his last hope for the night.
The house was quite dark, like its neighbors; and yet after a
few taps he heard a movement overhead, a door opening, and
a cautious voice asking who was there. The poet named him-
self in a loud whisper, and waited, not without some trepidation,
the result. Nor had he to wait long. A window was suddenly
opened, and a pailful of slops splashed down upon the doorstep.
## p. 13968 (#154) ##########################################
13968
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
ini! !
1
Villon had not been unprepared for something of the sort, and
had put himself as much in shelter as the nature of the porch
admitted; but for all that, he was deplorably drenched below the
waist. His hose began to freeze almost at once. Death from
cold and exposure stared him in the face; he remembered he
was of phthisical tendency, and began coughing tentatively. But
the gravity of the danger steadied his nerves. He stopped a
few hundred yards from the door where he had been so rudely
used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. He could only
see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take it. He
had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it might be
easily broken into; and thither he betook himself promptly, enter-
taining himself on the way with the idea of a room still hot,
with a table still loaded with the remains of supper, where he
might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he should
issue on the morrow with an armful of valuable plate. He even
considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and
as he was calling the roll of his favorite dainties, roast fish pre-
sented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and
horror.
“I shall never finish that ballade,” he thought to himself; and
then, with another shudder at the recollection, “Oh, damn his fat
head! ” he repeated fervently, and spat upon the snow.
The house in question looked dark at first sight; but as Vil.
lon made a preliminary inspection in search of the handiest point
of attack, a little twinkle of light caught his eye from behind a
curtained window.
« The Devil! ” he thought. “People awake! Some student or
some saint, confound the crew! Can't they get drunk and lie in
bed snoring like their neighbors! What's the good of curfew,
and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's end in bell-
towers ? What's the use of day, if people sit up all night? The
gripes to them ! He grinned as he saw where his logic was
leading him. "Every man to his business, after all,” added he:
(and if they're awake, by the Lord, I may come by a supper
honestly for once, and cheat the Devil. ”
He went boldly to the door and knocked with an assured
hand. On both previous occasions, he had knocked timidly and
with some dread of attracting notice; but now when he had just
discarded the thought of a burglarious entry, knocking at a door
C
## p. 13969 (#155) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13969
1
:
11
TO
seemed a mighty simple and innocent proceeding. The sound of
his blows echoed through the house with thin, phantasmal rever-
berations, as though it were quite empty; but these had scarcely
died away before a measured tread drew near, a couple of bolts
were withdrawn, and one wing was opened broadly, as though no
guile or fear of guile were known to those within. A tall figure
of a man, muscular and spare, but a little bent, confronted Villon.
The head was massive in bulk, but finely sculptured; the nose
blunt at the bottom, but refining upward to where it joined a
pair of strong and honest eyebrows; the mouth and eyes sur-
rounded with delicate markings, and the whole face based upon a
thick white beard, boldly and squarely trimmed. Seen as it was
by the light of a flickering hand-lamp, it looked perhaps nobler
than it had a right to do; but it was a fine face, honorable rather
than intelligent, strong, simple, and righteous.
“You knock late, sir,” said the old man in resonant, courteous
tones.
Villon cringed, and brought up many servile words of apology:
at a crisis of this sort, the beggar was uppermost in him, and the
man of genius hid his head with confusion.
“You are cold,” repeated the old man, “and hungry? Well,
And he ordered him into the house with a noble
enough gesture.
"Some great seigneur,” thought Villon, as his host, setting
down the lamp on the flagged pavement of the entry, shot the
bolts once more into their places.
«You will pardon me if I go in front,” he said, when this
was done; and he preceded the poet up-stairs into a large apart-
ment, warmed with a pan of charcoal and lit by a great lamp
hanging from the roof. It was very bare of furniture: only some
gold plate on a sideboard; some folios; and a stand of armor be-
tween the windows. Some smart tapestry hung upon the walls,
representing the crucifixion of our Lord in one piece, and in
another a scene of shepherds and shepherdesses by a running
stream. Over the chimney was a shield of arms.
“Will you seat yourself,” said the old man, “and forgive me
if I leave you? I am alone in my house to-night, and if you are
to eat I must forage for you myself. ”
No sooner was his host gone than Villon leaped from the
chair on which he had just seated himself, and began examining
the room with the stealth and passion of a cat. He weighed the
XXIV–874
step in. ”
(
(
(
## p. 13970 (#156) ##########################################
13970
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
gold flagons in his hand, opened all the folios, and investigated the
arms upon the shield, and the stuff with which the seats were
lined. He raised the window curtains, and saw that the windows
were set with rich stained glass, in figures, so far as he could see,
of martial import. Then he stood in the middle of the room,
drew a long breath, and retaining it with puffed cheeks, looked
round and round him, turning on his heels, as if to impress every
feature of the apartment on his memory.
“Seven pieces of plate," he said. “If there had been ten, I
would have risked it. A fine house, and a fine old master, so
help me all the saints! »
And just then hearing the old man's tread returning along
the corridor, he stole back to his chair, and began humbly toast-
ing his wet legs before the charcoal pan.
His entertainer had a plate of meat in one hand and a jug
of wine in the other. He set down the plate upon the table,
motioning Villon to draw in his chair; and going to the side-
board, brought back two goblets, which he filled.
“I drink your better fortune,” he said, gravely touching Vil-
lon's cup with his own.
« To our better acquaintance,” said the poet, growing bold. A
mere man of the people would have been awed by the courtesy
of the old seigneur, but Villon was hardened in that matter:
he had made mirth for great lords before now, and found them
as black rascals as himself. And so he devoted himself to the
viands with a ravenous gusto, while the old man, leaning back-
ward, watched him with steady, curious eyes.
“You have blood on your shoulder, my man,” he said.
Montigny must have laid his wet right hand upon him as he
left the house. He cursed Montigny in his heart.
“It was none of my shedding,” he stammered.
“I had not supposed so," returned his host quietly.
"
"A
brawl ? »
“Well, something of that sort,” Villon admitted with a qua-
ver.
"Perhaps a fellow murdered ? »
“Oh no, not murdered,” said the poet, more and more con-
fused. "It was all fair play — murdered by accident.
I had no
hand in it, God strike me dead! ” he added fervently.
“One rogue the fewer, I daresay,” observed the master of
the house.
>
>>
## p. 13971 (#157) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13971
»
(
»
»
.
»
(
“You may dare to say that,” agreed Villon, infinitely relieved.
"As big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He
turned up his toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look
at.
I daresay you've seen dead men in your time, my lord ? ”
he added, glancing at the armor.
Many,” said the old man. “I have followed the wars, as
you imagine. ”
Villon laid down his knife and fork, which he had just taken
up again.
“Were any of them bald ? ” he asked.
“Oh yes, and with hair as white as mine. ”
“I don't think I should mind the white so much," said Villon.
« His was red. ” And he had a return of his shuddering and
tendency to laughter, which he drowned with a great draught
of wine. «I'm a little put out when I think of it,” he went on.
“I knew him — damn him! And then the cold gives a man fan-
cies - or the fancies give a man cold, I don't know which. ”
"Have you any money ? ” asked the old man.
"I have one white,” returned the poet, laughing. “I got it
out of a dead jade's stocking in a porch. She was as dead as
Cæsar, poor wench, and as cold as a church, with bits of ribbon
sticking in her hair. This is a hard world in winter for wolves
and wenches and poor rogues like me. ”
"I," said the old man, am Enguerrand de la Feuillée, sei-
gneur de Brisetout, bailly du Patatrac. Who and what may you
be ? "
Villon rose and made a suitable reverence. “I am called
Francis Villon,” he said, “a poor Master of Arts of this univer-
sity. I know some Latin, and a deal of vice. I can make chan-
sons, ballades, lais, virelais, and roundels, and I am very fond of
wine. I was born in a garret, and I shall not improbably die
upon the gallows. I may add, my lord, that from this night for-
ward I am your Lordship's very obsequious servant to command. ”
“No servant of mine,” said the knight: “my guest for this
evening, and no more. ”
"A very grateful guest,” said Villon politely; and he drank
in dumb show to his entertainer.
“You are shrewd,” began the old man, tapping his forehead,
very shrewd; you have learning; you are a clerk: and yet you
take a small piece of money off a dead woman in the street. Is
it not a kind of theft ? »
(C
## p. 13972 (#158) ##########################################
13972
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The poor
“It is a kind of theft much practiced in the wars, my lord. ”
« The wars
are the field of honor,” returned the old man
proudly. “There a man plays his life upon the cast; he fights
in the name of his lord the king, his Lord God, and all their
Lordships the holy saints and angels. ”
“Put it,” said Villon, “that I were really a thief: should I not
play my life also, and against heavier odds ? »
“For gain but not for honor. ”
“Gain ? ) repeated Villon with a shrug. “Gain!
fellow wants supper, and takes it. So does the soldier in a
campaign. Why, what are all these requisitions we hear so much
about? If they are not gain to those who take them, they are
loss enough to the others. The men-at-arms drink by a good
fire, while the burgher bites his nails to buy them wine and
wood. I have seen a good many plowmen swinging on trees
about the country; ay, I have seen thirty on one elm, and a very
poor figure they made: and when I asked some one how all these
came to be hanged, I was told it was because they could not
scrape together enough crowns to satisfy the men-at-arms. ”
"These things are a necessity of war, which the low-born
must endure with constancy. It is true that some captains drive
over-hard: there are spirits in every rank not easily moved by
pity; and indeed many follow arms who are no better than brig-
ands. ”
“You see,” said the poet, "you cannot separate the soldier
from the brigand; and what is a thief but an isolated brigand
with circumspect manners ? I steal a couple of mutton chops,
without so much as disturbing people's sleep; the farmer grum-
bles a bit, but sups none the less wholesomely on what remains.
You come up blowing gloriously on a trumpet, take away the
a
whole sheep, and beat the farmer pitifully into the bargain. I
have no trumpet; I am only Tom, Dick, or Harry; I am a rogue
and a dog, and hanging's too good for me — with all my heart:
but just ask the farmer which of us he prefers; just find out
which of us he lies awake to curse on cold nights. ”
«Look at us two,” said his Lordship. "I am old, strong, and
honored. If I were turned from my house to-morrow, hundreds
would be proud to shelter me. Poor people would go out and
pass the night in the streets with their children, if I merely
hinted that I wished to be alone. And I find you up, wandering
homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside!
(
(C
## p. 13973 (#159) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13973
-
some
I fear no man and nothing: I have seen you tremble and lose
countenance at a word. I wait God's summons contentedly in
my own house; or if it please the King to call me out again,
upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows,- a rough,
swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference
between these two ? ”
"As far as to the moon,” Villon acquiesced.
»
“But if I had
been born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar
Francis, would the difference have been any the less ? Should not
I have been warming my knees at this charcoal pan, and would
not you have been groping for farthings in the snow? Should
not I have been the soldier, and you the thief?
"A thief? ” cried the old man. “I a thief! If you understood
your words, you would repent them. ”
Villon turned out his hands with a gesture of inimitable im-
pudence. “If your Lordship had done me the honor to follow
my argument! ” he said.
"I do you too much honor in submitting to your presence,”
said the knight. « Learn to curb your tongue when you speak
with old and honorable men, or one hastier than I may
reprove you in a sharper fashion. ” And he rose and paced the
lower end of the apartment, struggling with anger and antipathy.
Villon surreptitiously refilled his cup, and settled himself more
comfortably in the chair, crossing his knees and leaning his head
upon one hand and the elbow against the back of the chair. He
was now replete and warm; and he was in no wise frightened for
his host, having gauged him as justly as was possible between
two such different characters. The night was far spent, and in a
very comfortable fashion after all; and he felt morally certain of
a safe departure on the morrow.
“Tell me one thing,” said the old man, pausing in his walk.
"Are you really a thief ? "
"I claim the sacred rights of hospitality," returned the poet.
“My lord, I am. ”
"You are very young,” the knight continued.
"I should never have been so old,” replied Villon, showing
his fingers, “if I had not helped myself with these ten talents.
They have been my nursing mothers and my nursing fathers. ”
« You may still repent and change. ”
"I repent daily,” said the poet. « There are few people
more given to repentance than poor Francis. As for change, let
## p. 13974 (#160) ##########################################
13974
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
somebody change my circumstances. A man must continue to
eat, if it were only that he may continue to repent. ”
«The change must begin in the heart,” returned the old man
solemnly.
“My dear lord,” answered Villon, “do you really fancy that I
steal for pleasure ? I hate stealing, like any other piece of work
or of danger. My teeth chatter when I see a gallows. But I
must eat, I must drink, I must mix in society of some sort.
What the Devil! Man is not a solitary animal - Cui Deus fæmi-
—
nam tradit. Make me king's pantler — make me abbot of St.
Denis- make me bailly of the Patatrac; and then I shall be
changed indeed. But as long as you leave me the poor scholar
Francis Villon, without a farthing, why, of course I remain the
same. ”
“The grace of God is all-powerful. ”
“I should be a heretic to question it,” said Francis. "It has
made you lord of Brisetout and bailly of the Patatrac: it has
given me nothing but the quick wits under my hat and these ten
toes upon my hands. May I help myself to wine? I thank you
respectfully. By God's grace, you have a very superior vintage. ”
The lord of Brisetout walked to and fro with his hands behind
his back. Perhaps he was not yet quite settled in his mind
about the parallel between thieves and soldiers; perhaps Villon
had interested him by some cross-thread of sympathy; perhaps
his wits were simply muddled by so much unfamiliar reasoning:
but whatever the cause, he somehow yearned to convert the
young man to a better way of thinking, and could not make up
his mind to drive him forth again into the street.
“ There is everything more than I can understand in this,” he
said at length. “Your mouth is full of subtleties, and the Devil
has led you very far astray; but the Devil is only a very weak
spirit before God's truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of
true honor, like darkness at morning. Listen to me once more.
I learned long ago that a gentleman should live chivalrously and
lovingly to God, and the king, and his lady; and though I have
seen many strange things done, I have still striven to command
my ways upon that rule. It is not only written in all noble his-
tories, but in every man's heart, if he will take care to read.
You speak of food and wine, and I know very well that hunger
is a difficult trial to endure; but you do not speak of other
wants: you say nothing of honor, of faith to God and other men,
»
## p. 13975 (#161) ##########################################
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
13975
of courtesy, of love without reproach. It may be that I am not
very wise,- and yet I think I am,— but you seem to me like
one who has lost his way and made a great error in life. You
are attending to the little wants, and you have totally forgot-
ten the great and only real ones, like a man who should be doc-
toring toothache on the Judgment Day. For such things as
honor and love and faith are not only nobler than food and
drink, but indeed I think we desire them more, and suffer more
sharply for their absence. I speak to you as I think you will
most easily understand me. Are you not, while careful to fill
your belly, disregarding another appetite in your heart, which
spoils the pleasure of your life and keeps you continually
wretched ? »
Villon was sensibly nettled under all this sermonizing. “You
think I have no sense of honor! ” he cried. “I'm poor enough,
God knows! It's hard to see rich people with their gloves, and
you blowing in your hands. An empty belly is a bitter thing,
although you speak so lightly of it. If you had had as many as
I, perhaps you would change your tune. Any way I'm a thief - -
make the most of that; but I'm not a devil from hell, God
strike me dead. I would have you to know I've an honor of my
own, as good as yours, though I don't prate about it all day long,
as if it was a God's miracle to have any. It seems quite natural
to me; I keep it in its box till it's wanted. Why now, look you
here, how long have I been in this room with you ? Did you not
tell me you were alone in the house? Look at your gold plate!
You're strong, if you like, but you're old and unarmed, and I
have my knife. What did I want but a jerk of the elbow, and
here would have been you with the cold steel in your bowels, and
there would have been me linking in the streets with an armful
of golden cups! Did you suppose I hadn't wit enough to see that ?
And I scorned the action. There are your damned goblets, as
safe as in a church; there are you, with your heart ticking as
good as new; and here am I, ready to go out again as poor as I
came in, with my one white that you threw in my teeth! And
you think I have no sense of honor — God strike me dead! »
The old man stretched out his right arm. “I will tell you
what you are,” he said.
»
« You are a rogue, my man; an impu-
dent and black-hearted rogue and vagabond. I have passed an
hour with you. Oh! believe me, I feel myself disgraced! And
you have eaten and drunk at my table. But now I am sick at
## p. 13976 (#162) ##########################################
13976
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
1
1
your presence; the day has come, and the night-bird should be
off to his roost. Will you go before, or after ? »
“Which you please,” returned the poet, rising. "I believe you
.
to be strictly honorable. ” He thoughtfully emptied his cup. "I
wish I could add you were intelligent,” he went on, knocking
on his head with his knuckles. "Age! age! the brains stiff and
rheumatic. ”
The old man preceded him, from a point of self-respect; Vil-
lon followed, whistling, with his thumbs in his girdle.
"God pity you,” said the lord of Brisetout at the door.
"Good-by, papa,” returned Villon with a yawn.
thanks for the cold mutton. ”
The door closed behind him. The dawn was breaking over
the white roofs. A chill, uncomfortable morning ushered in the
day. Villon stood and heartily stretched himself in the middle of
the road.
"A very dull old gentleman,” he thought. “I wonder what
his goblets may be worth. ”
« Many
## p. 13977 (#163) ##########################################
13977
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
(1828-)
M
ILLIAM JAMES Stillman is prominent among those American
writers whose lives are spent for the most part away from
the country of their birth. His writings partake to a de-
gree of the character of this voluntary exile; being somewhat desul-
tory, concerned with what is of uppermost importance at the moment,
– whether a search for a rare intaglio in forgotten little streets of
Rome, or an insurrection in Crete, whither the author has wandered,
or a discussion concerning the identity of an exhumed Greek statue.
Yet these seemingly ephemeral magazine articles are of a true liter-
ary quality, witnessing to deep and fine perceptions of art and life
underneath their surface carelessness. Mr. Stillman began his life as
an artist, but was drawn by its natural currents into the career of a
writer. Born in Schenectady in 1828, he was graduated from Union
College in 1848; beginning soon after the study of painting under
F. E. Church. He was for a time a resident artist in New York city,
where he established with Mr. Durand the first art journal ever pub-
lished in this country, the Crayon. After the year 1870 he devoted
himself, however, exclusively to literature; yet his art training proved
invaluable to him in his office of critic, enabling him to understand
and to formulate the instincts of his artistic temperament. From
1861 to 1865 he was United States consul in Rome; holding the same
office in Crete from 1865 to 1869. He was therefore a witness of the
insurrection in that island, concerning which he wrote the volume
entitled (The Cretan Insurrection. ' For many years he was a regu-
lar staff correspondent of the London Times, being stationed first at
Athens, and afterward at Rome; and for another long period he was
art critic of the New York Evening Post. His environment has
been peculiarly well adapted to his temperament: a fierce, free soul,
rejoicing in beauty and battle, he is equally at home in the still art
galleries of Florence and Rome, and in scenes of strife. His apprecia-
tion of art is subtle and intimate, in the nature of instinct, as is also
his appreciation of nature; though in this he is more mystical, more
deeply touched with the invisible soul of things. He was one of the
first artists who penetrated the Adirondacks, feeling to the uttermost
the almost oppressive beauty of the wilderness. His simple, sensuous,
and passionate love of art leads him directly back to Titian.
## p. 13978 (#164) ##########################################
13978
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
«In our time we have a new ideal, a new and maybe a higher develop-
ment of intellectual art; and as great a soul as Titian's might to-day reach
further towards the reconciled perfections of graphic art: but what he did,
no one can now do; the glory of that time has passed away, its unreasoning
faith, its wanton instinct, - reveling in art like children in the sunshine, and
rejoicing in childlike perception of the pomp and glory which overlay creation,
unconscious of effort, indifferent to science,- all gone with the fairies, the
saints, the ecstatic visions which framed their poor lives in gold. Only, still
reflecting the glory, as eastern mountains the sunken sun, came a few sympa-
thetic souls kindling into like glow with faint perception of what had passed
from the whole world beside: Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Watteau, Rey-
nolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and Delacroix kept the line of color, now at last
utterly extinguished. Now we reason, now we see facts; sentiment is out of
joint, and appearances are known to be liars; we have found the greater sub-
stance: we kindle with the utilities, and worship the aspiring spirit of a com-
mon humanity; we banish the saints from our souls and the gewgaws from
our garments, and walk clothed and in our right mind:
but we have
lost the art of painting; for when Eugène Delacroix died, the last painter
(visible above the man) who understood art as Titian understood it, and
painted with such art as Veronese's, passed away, leaving no pupil or suc-
cessor.
It is as when the last scion of a kingly race dies in some alien land. ”
.
Again he writes of the Venetian painters: “Their lives developed
their instincts and their instincts their art;” and of a modern paint-
ing: It is in the minor key of that lovely Eastern color-work such
as we see in the Persian carpets, and to me always something weird
and mysterious and touching, like the tones of an Æolian harp, or
the greeting of certain sad-voiced children touched by the shadow of
death before their babyhood is gone. ” These passages indicate an
unusual degree of sensitiveness to both the spirit and matter of art
products, — a sensitiveness especially marked in Mr. Stillman's articles
on the Old Italian Masters) contributed to the Century Magazine.
The side of his nature which is congenial with struggle is exhib-
ited in high light in The Cretan Insurrection); and Herzegovina,'
a book dealing with the insurrection of 1875-76 in that country. Re-
garding the Eastern question he writes: «The interests of civiliza-
tion — of Europe entire — demand its [the Mussulman government's]
replacement by a new government which shall be amenable to those
interests and progress.
Having once admitted the necessity
for its cessation, we shall more quickly find an accord over the man-
ner of replacing it. It is in attempting to reform it that the dan-
ger lies. ” Besides his various magazine articles on subjects of art
or politics, and the two books already mentioned, Mr. Stillman has
published (Turkish Rule and Turkish Warfare,' (The Acropolis of
Athens, and “On the Track of Ulysses. '
## p. 13979 (#165) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13979
BILLY AND HANS: A TRUE HISTORY
°
Sº
From the Century Magazine: Copyright 1897, by the Century Company
LONG as the problem of the possession of the capacity of
reasoning by the animals of lower rank than man in crea-
tion is investigated through those of their species that have
been domesticated, and in which the problem of heredity has be-
come complicated with human influence, and the natural instincts
with an artificial development of their faculties, no really valu-
able conclusions can be arrived at. It is only when we ke the
native gifts of an animal under investigation, at least without the
intervention of any trace of heredity and of what under teaching
may become a second nature, that we can estimate in scientific
exactitude the measure of intelligence of one of the lower ani-
mals. The ways of a dog or cat are the result of innumerable
generations of ancestors reared in intimate relations with the
human master mind. As subjects for investigation into the ques-
tion of animal character, they are therefore misleading, and the
wild creature must be taken. And so far as my observation
goes, the squirrel, of all the small animals, shows at once the
most character and the most affection; and I believe that the
history of two that I have lately lost has a dramatic quality
which makes it worth recording.
In my favorite summer resort at the lower edge of the Black
Forest, the quaint old town of Lauffenburg, a farmer's boy one
day brought me a young squirrel for sale. He was a tiny creat-
ure, probably not yet weaned: a variation on the ordinary type
of the European Sciurus (Sciurus vulgaris), gray instead of the
usual red, and with black tail and ears; so that at first, as he
contented himself with drinking his milk and sleeping, I was
not sure that he was not a dormouse. But examination of the
paws, with their delicate anatomy, so marvelously like the human
hand in their flexibility and handiness, and the graceful curl of
his tail, settled the question of genus; and mindful of my boy-
hood and early pets, I bought him and named him Billy. From
the first moment that he became my companion he gave me
his entire confidence, and accepted his domestication without the
least indication that he considered it captivity. There is gener-
ally a short stage of mute rebellion in wild creatures before
they come to accept us entirely as their friends,-a longing for
freedom which makes precautions against escape necessary. This
## p. 13980 (#166) ##########################################
13980
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
never appeared in Billy: he came to me for his bread and milk,
and slept in my pocket from the first, and enjoyed being caressed
as completely as if he had been born under my roof. No other
animal is so clean in its personal habits as the squirrel when in
health; and Billy soon left the basket which cradled his infancy,
and habitually slept under a fold of my bed-cover, sometimes
making his way to my pillow and sleeping by my cheek: and he
never knew what a cage was except when traveling, and even
then for the most part he slept in my pocket. He went with
me to the table d'hôte, and when invited out sat on the edge of
the table and ate his bit of bread with a decorum that made
him the admiration of all the children in the hotel, so that he
accompanied me in all my journeys. He acquired a passion for
tea sweet and warm, and to my indulgence of this taste I fear I
owe his early loss. He had full liberty to roam in my room: but
his favorite resort was my work-table when I was at work;
and when his diet became nuts he used to hide them among
my books, and then come to hunt them out again, like a child
with its toys. I sometimes found my typewriter stopped, and
discovered a hazelnut in the works. And when tired of his hide-
and-seek he would come to the edge and nod to me, to indicate
that he wished to go into my pocket or be put down to run
about the room; and he soon made a limited language of move-
ments of his head to tell me his few wants,- food, drink, to
sleep, or to take a climb on the highest piece of furniture in the
room. He was from the beginning devoted to me, and naturally
became like a spoiled child. If I gave him an uncracked nut,
he rammed it back into my hand to be cracked for him with
irresistible persistence. I did as many parents do, and indulged
him, to his harm and my own later grief. I could not resist
that coaxing nodding, and gave him what he wished, — tea when
I had mine, and cracked his nuts, to the injury of his teeth, I
was told.
In short, I made him as happy as I knew how.
Early in my possession of him I cast about if I might find
in the neighborhood a companion of the other sex for him; and
when finally I heard that in a village just across the Rhine there
was a captive squirrel for sale, I sent my son with orders to buy
it if a female. It turned out to be a male; but he bought it
just the same, - a bright, active, and quite unreconciled prisoner,
two months older than Billy, of the orthodox red, just tamed
enough to take his food from the hand, but accustomed to be
-
## p. 13981 (#167) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13981
kept with his neck in a collar, to which there was attached a
fathom of light dog-chain. He refused with his utmost energy
to be handled; and as it was not possible to keep the little
creature in the torture of that chain,- for I refuse to keep a
caged creature,- I cut the collar and turned him loose in my
chamber, where he kept involuntary company with Billy. The
imprisonment of the half-tamed but wholly unreconciled animal
was perhaps as painful to me as to him, and my first impulse
was to turn him out into his native forest to take his chances of
life; but I considered that he was already too far compromised
with Mother Nature for this to be prudent: for having learned
to take his food from a man, the first attack of hunger was sure
to drive him to seek it where he had been accustomed to find it;
and the probable consequence was being knocked on the head by
a village boy, or at best re-consigned to a worse captivity than
mine. He had no mother, and he was still little more than a
baby; so I decided to keep him and make him as happy as he
would let me. His name was Hans. Had I released him as I
thought to do, I had saved myself one sorrow, and this history
had lost its interest.
After a little strangeness, the companionship between the two
became as perfect as the utterly diverse nature of their squirrel.
ships would permit. Billy was social and as friendly as a little
dog, Hans always a little morose and not over-ready to accept
familiarities; Billy always making friendly advances to his corn-
panion, which were at first unnoticed, and afterward only sub-
mitted to with equanimity. It was as if Billy had accepted the
position of the spoiled child of the family, and Hans reluctantly
that of an elder brother who is always expected to make way
for the pet and baby of the house. Billy was full of fun, and
delighted to tease Hans, when he was sleeping, by nibbling at
his toes and ears, biting him playfully anywhere he could get at
him; and Hans, after a little indignant bark, would bolt away
and find another place to sleep in. As they both had the free-
dom of my large bedroom, - the door of which was carefully
guarded, as Hans was always on the lookout for a chance to bolt
out into the unknown, they had plenty of room for climbing,
and comparative freedom; and after a little time Hans adopted
Billy's habit of passing the night in the fold of my bed-rug, and
even of nestling with Billy near my head. Billy was from the
beginning a bad sleeper, and in his waking moments his standing
## p. 13982 (#168) ##########################################
13982
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
amusement was nibbling at Hans, who used to break out of his
sleep and go to the foot of the bed to lie; but never for long,
for he always worked his way back to Billy, and nestled down
again. When I gave Hans a nut, Billy would wait for him to
crack it, and deliberately take it out of his jaws and eat it, - to
which Hans submitted without a fight, or a snarl even, though
at first he held on a little; but the good-humor and caressing
ways of Billy were as irresistible with Hans as with us, and I
never knew him to retaliate in any way.
No two animals of the most domesticated species could have
differed in disposition more than these. During the first phase
of Hans's life he never lost his repugnance to being handled,
while Billy delighted in being fondled. The European squirrel is
by nature one of the most timid of animals, even more so than
the hare, being equaled in this respect only by the exquisite
flying-squirrel of America; and when it is frightened, as for in-
stance when held fast in any way or in a manner that alarms it,
it will bite even the most familiar hand, the feeling being appar-
ently that it is necessary to gnaw away the ligature which holds
it. Of course, considering the irreconcilability of Hans to captiv-
ity, I was obliged, much against my will, to get a cage for him
to travel in; and I made a little dark chamber in the upper part
of a wire bird-cage in which the two squirrels were put for trav-
eling: During the first journeys the motion of the carriage or
railway train made Hans quite frantic, while Billy took it with
absolute unconcern. On stopping at a hotel, they were invariably
,
released in my room.
Arriving at Rome, I fitted up a deep window recess for their
home: but they always had the run of the study, and Hans,
while never losing sight of a door left ajar, and often escaping
into adjoining rooms, made himself apparently happy in his new
quarters, climbing the high curtains, racing along the curtain
poles, and at intervals making excursions to the top of the book-
case; though to both, the table at which I was at work soon
became the favorite resort, and their antics there were as amus-
ing as those of a monkey. Toward the end of the year Billy
developed an indolent habit, which I now can trace to the disease
that finally took him from us; but he never lost his love for my
writing-table, where he used to lie and watch me at my work by
the hour. Hans soon learned to climb down from their window
bench, and up my legs and arms to the writing-table, and down
## p. 13983 (#169) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13983
again by the same road when he was tired of his exercises with
the pencils or penholders he found there, or of hunting out the
nuts which he had hidden the day before among the books and
papers; but I never could induce him to stay in my pocket with
Billy, who on cold days preferred sleeping there, as the warmth
of my body was more agreeable than that of their fur-lined nest.
There was something uncanny in Billy,-a preternatural animal
intelligence which one sees, generally, only in animals that have
had training and heredity to work on. He soon learned to indi-
cate to me his few wants: and one of the things which will never
fade from my memory is the pretty way in which he used to
come to the edge of the window bench and nod his head to me
to show that he wished to be taken; for he soon learned that it
was easier to call to me and be taken than it was to climb down
the curtain and run across the room to me. He nodded and
wagged his head until I went to him, and his flexible nose
wrinkled into the grotesque semblance of a smile, with all the
seductive entreaty an animal could show; and somehow we
learned to understand each other so well that I rarely mistook
his want, were it water or food, or to climb, or to get on my
table, or rest in my pocket. Notwithstanding all the forbearance
which Hans showed for his mischievous ways, and the real
attachment he had for Billy, Billy clearly preferred me to his
companion; and when during the following winter I was attacked
by bronchitis, and was kept in my bedroom for several days,
after a day of my absence my wife, going into the study, found
him in an extraordinary state of excitement, which she said
resembled hysterics, and he insisted on being taken. It occurred
to her that he wanted me, and she brought him up-stairs to my
bedroom, when he immediately pointed to be taken to me; and
as she was curious to see what he would do, and stopped at the
threshold, he bit her hand gently to spur her forward to the bed.
When put on the bed, he nestled down in the fur of my bed-
cover, perfectly contented. As long as I kept my room he was
brought up every day, and passed the day on my bed. At other
times the two slept together in an open box lined with fur,-
or what they seemed greatly to delight in, a wisp of new-mown
hay,- or the bend of the window-curtain, so nestled together
that it was hard to distinguish whether there were one or two.
Some instincts of the woods they were long losing the use of,
as the habit of often changing their sleeping-places. I provided
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13984
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
them with several, of which the ultimate favorite was the bag of
the window curtain; but sometimes when Billy was missing, he
was found in my waste-paper basket, and even in the drawer of
my typewriter desk, asleep. In their native forests these squir-
rels have this habit of changing their nests; and the mother
will carry her little ones from one tree to another to hide their
resting-place, as if she suspected the mischievous plans of the
boys to hunt them — and probably she does. But the nest I
made my squirrels in their traveling-carriage, of hard cardboard
well lined with fur, suited the hiding and secluding ways of
Hans for a long time best of all; and he abandoned it entirely
only when he grew so familiar as not to care to hide. They also
lost the habit of hiding their surplus food when they found food
never wanting
When the large cones of the stone-pine came into the market
late in the autumn, I got some to give them a taste of fresh
nuts; and the frantic delight with which Hans recognized the
relation to his national fir-cones, far away and slight as it was,
was touching. He raced around the huge and impenetrable
cone, tried it from every side, gnawed at the stem and then at
the apex, but in vain. Yet he persisted. The odor of the pine
seemed an intoxication to him; and the eager satisfaction with
which he split the nuts, once taken out for him, even when Billy
was watching him to confiscate them when open, was very inter-
esting: for he had never seen the fruit of the stone-pine, and
knew only the tiny things which the fir of the Northern forest
bears; and to extricate the pine-nuts from their strong and hard
cones was impossible to his tiny teeth. As for Billy, he was
content to sit and look on while Hans gnawed, and to take the
kernel from him when he had split the nut; and the charming
bonhomie with which he appropriated it, and with which Hans
submitted to the piracy, was a study.
The friendship between the two was very interesting: for
while Billy generally preferred being with me to remaining on
his window bench with Hans, he had intervals when he insisted
on being with Hans; while the latter seemed to care for nothing
but Billy, and would not remain long away from him willingly
as long as Billy lived. When the summer came again, being
unable to leave them with servants or the housekeeper, I put
them in their cage once more, and took them back to Lauffen-
burg for my vacation. Hans still retained his impatience at the
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WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13985
an
confinement even of my large chamber, and with a curious dili-
gence watched the door for a crack to escape by, though in all
other respects he seemed happy and at home and perfectly
familiar; and though always in this period of his life shy with
strangers, he climbed over me with perfect nonchalance. Billy,
on the contrary, refused freedom; and when I took him out into
his native woods he ran about a little, and came back to find his
place in my pocket as naturally as if it had been his birth-nest.
But the apparent yearning of Hans for liberty was to me
exquisite pain. He would get up on the window-bench, looking
out one way on the rushing Rhine, and the other on the stretch-
ing pine forest, and stand with one paw on the sash and the
other laid across his breast, and turn his bright black eyes from
one to the other view incessantly, and with a look of passionate
eagerness which made my heart ache. If I could have found a
friendly park where he could have been turned loose in security
from hunger and the danger of hunting boys and the snares
which beset a wild life, I would have released him at once. I
never so felt the wrong and mutual pain of imprisonment of
God's free creatures as then with poor Hans, whose independent
spirit had always made him the favorite of the two with my
wife; and now that the little drama of their lives is over, and
Nature has taken them both to herself again, I can never think
of this eager little creature with his passionate outlook over the
Rhineland without tears. But in the Rhineland, under the pre-
text that they eat off the top twigs of the pine-trees and spoil
their growth, they hunt the poor things with a malignancy that
makes it a wonder that there is one left to be captured; and
Hans's chance of life in those regions was the very least a
creature could have. As to the pretext of the destruction of
the pine-tops, I have looked at them in every part of the Black
Forest that I have visited, and have never been able to discover
one tree-top spoiled. It is possible that the poor little creatures,
when famished, may eat the young twigs of trees; but in my
opinion the accusation is only the case of the wolf who wants an
excuse to eat the lamb. Hans and Billy were both fond of roses
and lettuce; but nothing else in the way of vegetation, other
than fruits and nuts, would they eat. But when I remember
that in my boyhood I have joined in squirrel hunts, and that my
murderous lead has often crashed through their tender frames, I
have no right to cast stones at the Germans, but with pain and
humiliation remember my cruelty. I would sooner be myself
.
XXIV-875
## p. 13986 (#172) ##########################################
13986
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
shot than shoot another. I feel so keenly their winsome grace
when I can watch them in freedom that I cannot draw the line
between them and myself, except that they are worthier of life
than I am. The evolutionists tell us that we are descended from
some common ancestor of the monkey. It may be so: and if, as
has been conjectured by one scientist, that was the lemur, which
is the link between the monkey and the squirrel, I should not
object; but I hope that we branched off at the Sciurus, for I
would willingly be the far-off cousin of my little pets.
But before leaving Rome for my summer vacation at Lauff-
enburg, the artificial habits of life, and my ignorance of the con-
ditions of squirrel health, began to work their usual consequences.
Billy had begun to droop, and symptoms of some organic malady
appeared; though he grew more and more devoted to me, his
ambition to climb and disport himself diminished: and it was
clear that his civilized life had done for him what it does for
many of us,- shortened his existence.
shortened his existence. He never showed signs
of pain, but grew more sluggish, and would come to me and rest,
licking my hand like a little dog, and was as happy so as his
nature could show. They both hailed again with greedy enthusi-
asm the first nuts, fresh and crisp, and the first peaches, which I
went to Basel to purchase for them; and what the position per-
mitted me I supplied them with, with a guilty feeling that I
could never atone for the loss of what they lost with freedom. I
tried to make them happy in any way with my limited abilities;
and, the vacation over, we went back to Rome and the fresh
pine-cones and their window niche.
But there Billy grew rapidly worse, and I realized that the
tragedy of our little ménage was coming. He grew apathetic;
and would lie with his great black eyes looking into space, as if
in a dream. It became tragedy for me: for the symptoms were
the same as those of a dear little fellow who had first rejoiced
my father's heart in the years gone by, and who lies in an old
English church-yard; whose last hours I watched lapsing into
the eternity beyond, painlessly, and he, thank God! understanding
nothing of the great change. When he could no longer speak,
he beckoned me to lay my head on the same pillow. He died
of blood-poisoning, as I found after Billy's death that he also
did; and the identity of the symptoms (of the cause of which I
then understood nothing) brought back the memory of that last
solitary night when my boy passed from under my care, and his
eyes, large and dark like Billy's, grew dim and vacant like his.
## p. 13987 (#173) ##########################################
WILLIAM JAMES STILLMAN
13987
Billy, too, clung the closer to me as the end approached; and
when the apathy left him almost no recognition of things around,
he would grasp one of my fingers with his two paws, and lick it
till he tired. It was clear that death was at hand: and on the
last afternoon I took him out into the grounds of the Villa
Borghese to lie in the sunshine, and get perhaps a moment of
return to Mother Nature; but when I put him on the grass in
the warm light he only looked away into vacancy, and lay still,
and after a little dreamily indicated to me to take him up again:
and I remembered that on the day before his death I had car-
ried Russie into the green fields, hoping they would revive him
for one breathing-space, for I knew that death was on him; and
he lay and looked off beyond the field and flowers; and now he
almost seemed to be looking out of dear little Billy's eyes.
I went out to walk early the next morning, and when I re-
turned I found Billy dead, still warm, and sitting up in his box
of fresh hay in the attitude of making his toilet; for to the last
he would wash his face and paws, and comb out his tail, even
when his strength no longer sufficed for more than the mere
form of it. I am not ashamed to say that I wept like a child.
The dear little creature had been to me not merely a pet to
amuse my vacant hours,— though many of those most vacant
which sleepless nights bring had been diverted by his pretty
ways as he shared my bed, and by his singular devotion to me,
but he had been as a door open into the world of God's lesser
creatures, an apostle of pity and tenderness for all living things,
and his memory stands on the eternal threshold nodding and
beckoning to me to enter in and make part of the creation I had
ignored till he taught it to me; so that while life lasts I can no
longer inflict pain or death upon the least of God's creatures. If
it be true that “to win the secret of a weed's plain heart” gives
the winner a clue to the hidden things of the spiritual life, how
much more the conscient and reciprocal love which Billy and I
bore, and I could gladly say still bear, each other, must widen
the sphere of spiritual sympathy; which, widening still, reaches at
last the eternal source of all life and love, and finds indeed that
one touch of nature makes all things kin. Living and dying,
Billy has opened to me a window into the universe, of the
existence of which I had no suspicion; his little history is an
added chamber to that eternal mansion into which my constant
and humble faith assures me that I shall some time enter; he
»
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