The Giraffe’s Tablets. Jardin des Plantes
Letter to Her Lover in the Desert
Praised be the good spirits that protect Ants, Giraffes, and probably men! Before many days we shall meet, never to part.
The learned men of whom I shall presently speak, who in this land make the weather—bad weather, as a rule—have decreed in their wisdom that it is not good for Giraffes to be alone, as the social habits of our race can never be truly ascertained from the study of a single individual. How this happens I cannot explain. I have, however, put you in possession of the fact that you may know as much as I do myself.
Here I am transported to a land one finds it hard to get used to, a land where the sun is pale, the moon dim, the wind damp, the dust dry and dirty, and the air icy cold. Of the three hundred and sixty odd days which make up the year, it rains during three hundred and forty, when the roads become rivers unfit for the dainty foot of Giraffes. During winter the rain becomes white, and covers all things with one uniform dazzling carpet, which wounds the eye and saddens the heart. The water becomes solid, and misery waits upon birds and beasts, who perish on the banks of the streams without being able to quench their thirst.
The species of animal that rules in this region is the most ill-favoured of all God’s creatures. His head, instead of conforming to our graceful model, is nearly round like a melon, and partly covered with short hair like hogs’ bristles, only thicker, darker, and not so clean looking; his neck is almost hidden between his shoulders, and only develops by becoming thicker and shorter; his skin is of an earthy colour; and to complete this ridiculous picture, he has got into the stupid way of walking on his hind-legs, and swinging those in front to maintain his equilibrium. It is difficult to imagine any figure more vulgar or absurd. I am inclined to think that this poor animal is afflicted with a painful sense of his deformity, for he hides as much of his figure as possible. He uses for this purpose an artificial covering fabricated out of the bark of plants and skins of animals. This device does not mend matters, as it renders him an ugly piece of patchwork. The first sight of a man—that is the name by which this hideous animal is known—will cause you to be thankful you were born clothed by the Creator in matchless attire, and that you have never fallen into the hands of a Parisian tailor.
We express our sentiments and needs in simple sounds and looks; they, on the other hand—who appear formerly to have enjoyed the same privilege—carried away by a fatal instinct, or, if one must believe the wisest of them, subject to a destiny of incomparable punishment, supplanted nature’s simple language by an almost continuous grumbling. They have invented sounds in abundance to signify what they don’t want and can’t get, and spend half their days in gabbling over the limited nature of their moral and physical appetites. These sounds sometimes express wishes, but more frequently what is called ideas. Ideas are in themselves nothing, although they are the key to all that is deficient, cross, and hostile in what these creatures call conversation. When two Men separate after conversing for hours, we may rest assured that the one ignores all that has been said by the other, and hates him more thoroughly than before.
It is also necessary for me to tell you that this animal is essentially ferocious, and feeds upon flesh and blood. This need not frighten you; either from his natural cowardice, or from a horrible refinement of ingratitude and cruelty, he only devours poor defenceless timid beasts, easy to surprise and kill, and who have often clothed him with their wool or enriched him with their service. Again, it is his custom to rear these victims in his own country. An animal from a strange land inspires a sort of religious respect, which is shown in the utmost care and homage. He lays out parks for the Gazelle, embellishes the Lion’s den, and digs a pond for the Hippopotamus. As for myself, he had planted rows of trees with nourishing leaves; beneath my feet is a mossy sward and belt of fine sand, a miniature desert, while my dwelling is kept at a uniform temperature. His poor fellow-creatures would only be too delighted if he took the same care of them. He cares for them at a distance, and at times, without warning, breaks out into a frenzy and slaughters them right and left.
These massacres are said to be caused by some high-sounding nothing called a word or an idea. Men—being by nature harmless or unarmed—have invented destructive weapons of the most formidable kind. When they cannot agree about any given idea they bring out their weapons, and the side which works the greatest destruction of life and property is always right. Right is built upon the wreck of empires, so Men say, until some giant power proves right to be wrong and dethrones it, showing that right is a sort of weathercock that changes with every wind of government.
There are Men, and there are also extraordinary Men—that is, a class called Scholars. The grubs of these creatures are bred in books. Many of them die while yet buried in printed leaves, in the chrysalis state, from which they never emerge; but the Book-worm, after many days, ought, full fledged, to soar away into the light of science.
It is the duty of Scholars to pay more attention to the words in which ideas are expressed than to the ideas themselves, as well as to invent words, which few will understand, to denote the commonest things. When speaking, the Scholar is careful to use words so seldom pronounced, that it would be better if they were not pronounced at all.
Above all, the most interesting human type is Woman, a poor, soft, elegant, timid, delicate creature, who became the slave of Man. I do not know where or when, but he has trained her to submit to him like the Horse, either by force or cunning. I tell you she is by far the most graceful form in nature, yet Man spoils her appearance; she is seen to greater perfection without him. She has few sentiments save love; the need of loving some one or something shows itself early, and never leaves her. During her youth the hours are spent in conjuring up in her mind some ideal Man with whom she is to live a blissful life. She after a time becomes the wife of some one in whom she thinks she has found the lover of her dreams. Alas! too often the illusion soon passes away, and she learns that the fond image of her youth was a being of a higher sphere.
You will be surprised at my giving you so many details regarding this country and its animals, but as yet I have told you nothing about the way they govern themselves. Politics pure and simple is the science most talked about and least understood in France. If you listen to one person on the subject of politics, his ideas seem obscure; if to two, they are confused; if to three, they are chaotic. When the number of speakers increase to four or five, they are prepared to strangle each other. Judging from the universal favour in which I am held by all classes, it has once or twice crossed my mind that all their political sentiments had found a calm centre in myself, and that they would at last elect me their king. This seems all the more likely since Frenchmen are utterly unable to agree as to the exact moral and intellectual qualities which should adorn a prince, and it may be they have in a friendly way resolved to choose their masters according to height. By adopting this plan, party spirit would be demolished, and all questions settled by measurement.
Last week I resolved to be present at a meeting of deputies to be held nearer to the river than my abode. I accordingly bent my steps that way, and soon arrived at a sort of palace filled with a tumultuous throng.
The members of the Cabinet only differed from other men in characteristic ugliness, the result, it is said, of grave habits of thought, and of the manner in which they snatch their pleasures from the cares of office. What surprised me most was their activity, which never permitted them to rest for an instant in the same spot, for I was witnessing by chance one of the stormy meetings of the session. They tossed themselves about, jumped and mixed into a hundred confused groups, apostrophising their adversaries with cries and menacing gestures, and showing their teeth with the most hideous grimaces. The object of most of them seemed to be to raise themselves above their fellows, and there were those who compassed this end by mounting on the heads and shoulders of their neighbours.
Unfortunately, though well pleased to witness the gambols of the assembly, owing to my superior stature I failed to catch a single word in the confusion of voices, and I retired sickened and deafened by the vociferation, grinding of teeth, whisking of tails, whistling and howling, without being able to form a conjecture as to the subject under discussion.
For all that, something was carried, and the speeches, it is said, appeared in the official organ next day in most harmonious prose. There are those who say that all the séances resemble this one in a greater or less degree, so I shall dispense with witnessing another.2
I had proposed to give you, before closing my letter, some specimens of the language now used in Paris. You will be able to form your own notions of it from the following sentences, which have just been exchanged between a young man with a Bison’s beard, and a young woman with the eyes of a Gazelle, to whom he was trying to justify his long absence:—
“I was preoccupied, beautiful Isoline, with sublime ideas, of which your woman’s heart has the noble intuition. Placed by the capacities which they have been willing to accord to me at the zenith of the adepts of perfectionabilisation, and long absorbed in philosophic, philanthropic, and humanitarian speculations, I was tracing the plan of a political encyclism which would moralise all peoples, harmonise all institutions, utilise all the faculties, and develop all the sciences; but I was not the less drawn towards you by the most passionate attraction, and I”——
“Say no more,” solemnly interrupted Isoline; “do not think me a stranger to those lofty aspirations, and pray do not suspect my spirit capable of being charmed by the baits of a coarse nature. Proud of your destiny, dear Adhimar, in the sentiment which unites us I only see an elective affinity which the instinct of cohesion has confounded with a sympathetic individuality, or, to express myself more clearly, the fusion of these isolated idiosyncrasies which feel the need of becoming simultaneous.”
Here the conversation was continued in a low voice, and I think I may suppose that it became more intelligible, for the young philosopher was beaming with pleasure when he left Isoline.
THE GIRAFFE.
Notes
2 It is evident that the Giraffe falls into a mistake, which is scarcely an excusable one were she not quite innocent. Confined in the Jardin des Plantes, she could not visit the Chamber of Deputies, which she imagines she is describing. What she did see was the Monkeys’ palace.—ED.