DEATH AND PITY

Le livre de la Pitié et de la Mortis the latest and, in my estimation, in some respects, the most touching and the most precious of the works of Loti, and I wish that this little volume, so small in bulk, so pregnant with thought and value, could be translated into every language spoken upon earth, and sped like an electric wave over the dull, deaf, cruel multitudes of men. It is not that Loti himself needs a larger public than he possesses. All who have any affinity with him know every line he writes.

Despite the singular absence of all scholarship in his works—for, indeed, he might be living before the birth of Cadmus for any allusion which he ever makes to the art of letters—a perfect instinct of style, like the child Mozart’s instinct for harmony, has led him to the most exquisite grace and precision of expression, the most accurate, as well as the most ideal realisations in words alike of scenery and of sentiment.

His earlier works were not unjustly reproached with beingtrop décousu, too impressionist; but in his later books this imperfection is no longer traceable, they are delicately and beautifully harmonious. Asympathetic critic has said, perhaps rightly, that the long night-watches on the sea, the long isolation of ocean voyages, and the removal from the common-place conventional pressure of society in cities and provinces have kept his mind singularly free, original and poetic. But no other sailor has ever produced anything beautiful, either in prose or in verse; and the influence of the Armorican coast and the Breton temperament have probably had more to do with making him what he is than voyages which leave sterile those who with sterile minds and souls go down to the deep in ships, and come back with their minds and their hands empty. He would have been just what he is had he never been rocked on any other waves than the long grey breakers of the iron coast of Morbihan, and, to those whom from the first have known and loved his poetic and pregnant thoughts, even the palm leaves of the first intellectual Academy of the world can add nothing to his merit, nay, they seem scarcely to accord with his soul, free as the seagull’s motion, and his sympathy wide as that ocean which has cradled and nursed him.

But it is not of himself that I wish to speak here. It is of this last little book of his which, so small in compass, is yet vast as the universe in what it touches and suggests. All the cultured world has, doubtless, read it; but how little and narrow is that world compared to the immeasurable multitudes to which the volume will for ever remain unknown, and also to that, alas! equally great world to which it would be, even when read, a dead letter: for to those who have no ear for harmony the music of Beethoven is but as the crackling of thorns under a pot. He knows this,and in his preface counsels such as these to leave it alone, for it can only weary them.

Indeed, the book is in absolute and uncompromising opposition to the modern tone of his own times, and to the bare, dry, hard temperament of his generation. It is in direct antagonism with what is called the scientific spirit and its narrow classifications. It is full of altruism of the widest, purest and highest kind, stretching out its comprehension and affection to those innumerable races which the human race has disinherited, driven into bondage, and sacrificed to its own appetites and desires. To its author the ox in the shambles, the cat in the gutter is as truly a fellow creature as the mariner on his deck, or the mother by his hearth; the nest of the bird is as sacred as the rush hut of the peasant, and the cry of the wounded animal reaches his heart as quickly as the wail of the fisherman’s widow. No one can reproach him, as they reproach me (a reproach I am quite willing to accept), with thinking more of animals than of men and women. His charities to his own kind are unceasing and boundless; he is ever foremost in the relief of sorrow and want. It cannot be said either that he is what is scornfully called a ‘mere sentimentalist.’ He is well known as a daring and brilliant officer in his service, and he has shown that he possesses moral as well as physical courage, and that he is careless of censure and indifferent to his own interests and prospects when he is moved to indignation against the tyrannies of the strong over the weak. Here is no woman who has dreamed by her fireside or in her rose garden until her sentiment has overshadowed her reason, but abrave des braves, aman whose life is spent by choice in the most perilous contest with the forces of nature, a man who has been often under fire, who has seen war in all its sickly horror, who has felt the lightnings of death playing round him in a thousand shapes. His noble and rashly-expressed indignation at the barbarities shown in the taking of Tonquin led to his temporary banishment from the French navy. He does prove, and has ever proved, in his conduct as in his writings, that to him nothing human can be alien. But he is not hemmed in behind the narrow pale of humanitarianism: he has the vision to see, and the courage to show, that the uncounted, sentient, suffering children of creation for whom humanity has no mercy, but merely servitude and slaughter, are as dear to him as his own kind.

In a century which in its decrepitude has fallen prone and helpless under the fiat of the physiologist and bacteriologist, this attitude needs no common courage. Browning had this courage, Renan had it not. In an age when the idolatry of man is carried to a height which would be ludicrous in its inflated conceit were it not in its results so tragic, it requires no common force and boldness to speak as Loti speaks of the many other races of the earth as equally deserving with their tyrants of tenderness and comprehension; to admit, as he admits, that in the suppliant eyes of his little four-footed companions he can see, as in a woman’s or a child’s, the soul within speaking and calling to his own.

‘She’ (she is a little Chinese cat which had taken refuge on board his frigate) ‘came out of the shadow, stretching herself slowly, as if to give herself time for reflection. She came towardsme with several pauses, sometimes with a Mongolian grace; she lifted one paw in the air before deciding to put it down and take a further step; and all the while she gazed at me fixedly, questioningly. I wondered what she could want with me. I had had her well fed by my servant. When she was quite near, very near, she sat down, brought her tail round her legs, and made a very soft little noise. And she continued to look at me, to look at mein the eyes, which indicated that intelligent ideas were thronging through her small head. It was evident that she understood, as all animals do, that I was not a thing, but a thinking being, capable of pity, and accessible to the mute entreaty of a look. Besides, it was plain that my eyes were really eyes to her, that is, they were mirrors in which her little soul sought anxiously to seize some reflection from my own.‘And whilst she thus gazed at me, I let my hand droop on to her quaint little head, and stroked her fur as my first caress. What she felt at my touch was certainly something more than a mere impression of physical pleasure; she had some sentiment, some comprehension of protection and sympathy in her forsaken misery. This was why she had ventured out of her hiding-place in the dark; this was what she had resolved to ask me for with diffidence and hesitation. She did not want either to eat or drink, she only wanted a little companionship in this lonely world, a little friendship.‘How had she learned that such things were, this stray, hunted creature, never touched by a kind hand, never loved by anyone, unless, perhaps, on board some junk, by some poor little Chinese child who had neither caresses nor playthings, sprung up by chance like a sickly plant, one too many in the grovelling yellow crowd, as unhappy and as hungry as herself, and of whom the incomplete soul will at its disappearance from earth leave no more trace than hers? Then one frail paw was timidly laid on my lap, with such infinite delicacy, such exceeding discretion! and, after having lingeringly consulted and implored me through the eyes, she sprang upon my lap, thinking the moment come when she might establish intimate relations with me. She installed herself there in a ball, with a tact, a reserve, a lightness incredible, and always gazing up inmy face ... and her eyes becoming still more expressive, still more winning, said plainly to mine,—‘“In this sad autumn day, since we are both alone in this floating prison, rocked and lost in the midst of I know not what endless perils, why should we not give to one another a little of that sweet exchange of feeling which soothes so many sorrows, which has a semblance of some immaterial eternal thing not subjected to death, which calls itself affection, and finds its expression in a touch, a look?″’

‘And whilst she thus gazed at me, I let my hand droop on to her quaint little head, and stroked her fur as my first caress. What she felt at my touch was certainly something more than a mere impression of physical pleasure; she had some sentiment, some comprehension of protection and sympathy in her forsaken misery. This was why she had ventured out of her hiding-place in the dark; this was what she had resolved to ask me for with diffidence and hesitation. She did not want either to eat or drink, she only wanted a little companionship in this lonely world, a little friendship.

‘How had she learned that such things were, this stray, hunted creature, never touched by a kind hand, never loved by anyone, unless, perhaps, on board some junk, by some poor little Chinese child who had neither caresses nor playthings, sprung up by chance like a sickly plant, one too many in the grovelling yellow crowd, as unhappy and as hungry as herself, and of whom the incomplete soul will at its disappearance from earth leave no more trace than hers? Then one frail paw was timidly laid on my lap, with such infinite delicacy, such exceeding discretion! and, after having lingeringly consulted and implored me through the eyes, she sprang upon my lap, thinking the moment come when she might establish intimate relations with me. She installed herself there in a ball, with a tact, a reserve, a lightness incredible, and always gazing up inmy face ... and her eyes becoming still more expressive, still more winning, said plainly to mine,—

‘“In this sad autumn day, since we are both alone in this floating prison, rocked and lost in the midst of I know not what endless perils, why should we not give to one another a little of that sweet exchange of feeling which soothes so many sorrows, which has a semblance of some immaterial eternal thing not subjected to death, which calls itself affection, and finds its expression in a touch, a look?″’

In the dying hours of another cat, the charming Moumoutte Blanche, whose frolics we follow, and whose snowy beauty we know so well, the same thought comes to him.

‘She tried to rise to greet us, her expression grateful and touched, her eyes showing, as much as human eyes could, the internal presence and the pain of that which we call the soul.‘One morning I found her stiff and cold, with glassy orbs, a dead beast, a thing men cast out on to the dust heap. Then I bade Sylvester dig a little grave in a corner of the courtyard, at the foot of a shrub.... Where was gone that which I had seen shine in her dying eyes, the little, flickering, anxious flame from within: where was it gone?’

‘She tried to rise to greet us, her expression grateful and touched, her eyes showing, as much as human eyes could, the internal presence and the pain of that which we call the soul.

‘One morning I found her stiff and cold, with glassy orbs, a dead beast, a thing men cast out on to the dust heap. Then I bade Sylvester dig a little grave in a corner of the courtyard, at the foot of a shrub.... Where was gone that which I had seen shine in her dying eyes, the little, flickering, anxious flame from within: where was it gone?’

And he carries her little lifeless body himself down into the open air.

‘Never had there been a more radiant day of June, never a softer silence and warmth crossed by the gay buzzing of summer flies; the courtyard was all blossom, the rose boughs covered with roses; a sweet country calm rested on all the gardens around; the swallows and martins slumbered; only the old tortoise, Suleima, more widely awake the warmer it became, travelled merrily without aim or goal over the old sun-bathed stones. There was everywhere that melancholy of skies too fair, of weather too fine, in the exhaustion of a hot noon-day. All the plants, all the things, seemed to cruelly shout there the triumph over their own perpetual new birth, without pity forthe fragile human creatures who heard that song of summer, weighed themselves with the consciousness of their own impending, unavoidable end.‘This garden was and is to me the oldest and most familiar of all the places of the earth, in which all the smallest details have been known to me from the earliest hours of the vague and surprised impressions of infancy. So much so that I am attached to it with all my soul; that I love with a singular force and regard almost as my fetish the venerable plants which grow there, its trellised branches, its climbing jessamines, and a certain rose-coloured diclytra which every month of March displays on the same spot its early-burgeoning leaves, sends out its flowers in April, grows yellow in the suns of June, and at last, burnt up by August, seems to give up the ghost and perish.... And with an infinite melancholy, in this place so gay with the fresh sunlight of a young year, I watched the two beloved figures with white hair and mourning gowns, my mother and Aunt Claire, going and coming, leaning down over a flower border as they had done so many years to see what blossoms were already opening, or raising their heads to look at the buds of the creepers and the roses. And when the two black robes went onward and became farther away in the far perspective of a long green avenue, I saw how much slower was their step, how bent were their forms. Alas for that time too close at hand when in the green avenue which would be ever the same, I should behold their shadows no more! Is it possible that a time will ever come when they shall have left this life? I feel as if they will not entirely depart so long as I myself shall be here, to invoke their benevolent presence, and that in the summer evenings I shall still see their blessed shades pass under the old jessamines and vines, and that something of their spirit will remain to me in the plants which they cherished, in the drooping boughs of the honeysuckle and in the rosy petals of the old diclytra!’

‘This garden was and is to me the oldest and most familiar of all the places of the earth, in which all the smallest details have been known to me from the earliest hours of the vague and surprised impressions of infancy. So much so that I am attached to it with all my soul; that I love with a singular force and regard almost as my fetish the venerable plants which grow there, its trellised branches, its climbing jessamines, and a certain rose-coloured diclytra which every month of March displays on the same spot its early-burgeoning leaves, sends out its flowers in April, grows yellow in the suns of June, and at last, burnt up by August, seems to give up the ghost and perish.... And with an infinite melancholy, in this place so gay with the fresh sunlight of a young year, I watched the two beloved figures with white hair and mourning gowns, my mother and Aunt Claire, going and coming, leaning down over a flower border as they had done so many years to see what blossoms were already opening, or raising their heads to look at the buds of the creepers and the roses. And when the two black robes went onward and became farther away in the far perspective of a long green avenue, I saw how much slower was their step, how bent were their forms. Alas for that time too close at hand when in the green avenue which would be ever the same, I should behold their shadows no more! Is it possible that a time will ever come when they shall have left this life? I feel as if they will not entirely depart so long as I myself shall be here, to invoke their benevolent presence, and that in the summer evenings I shall still see their blessed shades pass under the old jessamines and vines, and that something of their spirit will remain to me in the plants which they cherished, in the drooping boughs of the honeysuckle and in the rosy petals of the old diclytra!’

He feels, and feels intensely, the similarity of sentiment between himself and all other forms of sentient life. He is not ashamed to perceive and acknowledge that the emotions of the animal are absolutely thesame in substance as our own, and differ from ours only in degree. Could this knowledge become universal it would go far to make cruelty impossible in man, but as yet it has only been realised and admitted by the higher minds of a very few, such as his own, as Tennyson’s, as Wordsworth’s, as Browning’s, as Lecomte de Lisle’s, as Sully Prudhomme’s; it requires humility and sympathy in the human breast of no common kind; it is the absolute antithesis of the vanity and egotism of what is called the scientific mind, although more truly scientific, that is, more logical, than the bombast and self-worship of the biologist and physiologist.

Loti sees and feels that the little African cat from Senegal, which he brought to his own Breton home, is moved by the same feelings as himself, and in a more pathetic because a more helpless way, and he has remorse for a momentary unkindness to her as though she were living still.

‘It was one day when, with the obstinacy of her race, she had jumped where she had been twenty times forbidden to go, and had broken a vase to which I was much attached. I gave her a slap at first; then, my anger not satiated, I pursued her and kicked her with my foot. The slap had only surprised her, but the kick told her that it was war between us; and then she fled as fast as four legs would take her, her tail like a feather in the wind. When safe under a piece of furniture she turned round and cast at me a look of reproach and distress, believing herself lost, betrayed, and assassinated by one beloved, into whose hands she had entrusted her fate; and as my look at her remained hostile and unkind, she gave vent to the great cry of a creature at bay. Then all my wrath ceased in one instant: I called her, I caressed her, I soothed her, taking her on my knees all breathless and terrified. Oh, that last cry of despair from an animal, whether from the poor ox tied to the slaughter-place,or of the miserable rat held in the teeth of a bull-dog—that last cry which hopes nothing, which appeals to no one, which is like a supreme protestation thrown in the face of Nature, an appeal to some unknown pity floating in the air. Now all which remains of my little cat, whom I remember so living and so droll, are a few bones in a hole at the foot of a tree. And her flesh, her little person, her affection for me, her infinite terror that day she was scolded, her great joy, her anguish and reproach—all, in a word, which moved and lived, and had their being around these bones—all have become but a little dust!’

‘What a spiritual mystery, a mystery of the soul, that constant affection of an animal, and its long gratitude!’ he says in another place; and when, meaning to act mercifully, he gives chloroform to a poor, sick, stray cat, he is haunted by the fear that he has done wrong to end for it that poor little atom of joyless, friendless life, which was all that it could call its own.

This is its story,—

‘An old, mange-eaten cat, driven away from its home, no doubt by its owner, for its age and infirmities, had established itself in the street on the doorstep of our house, where a little warmth from a November sun came to comfort it. It is a habit of certain people who call their selfishness sensibility to send out to be purposely lost, the creatures which they will not take care of any longer, and do not desire to see suffer. All the day he had sat there, piteously huddled in a corner of a window, looking so unhappy and so humble! An object of disgust to all the passers-by, threatened by children, by dogs, by continual dangers, every hour more ill and feeble, eating Heaven knows what rubbish, got with difficulty out of the gutter, he dragged out his existence, prolonging it as best he might, trying to retard the moment of his death. His poor head was covered with scabs and sores, and had scarcely any fur left on it, but his eyes remained pretty, and seemed full of thought. He had certainly felt, in all the frightful bitterness of his lot, that last degradationof all, the inability to make his toilette, to polish his coat, to wash and comb himself as all cats love to do so carefully. It hurt me so to see this poor lost animal that, after having sent him food into the street, I approached him and spoke to him gently. (Animals soon understand kind words, and are consoled by them.) Having been so often hunted and driven away, he was at first frightened at seeing me near him; his first look was timid, suspicious, at once a reproach and a prayer! Then soon comprehending that I was there from sympathy, and astonished at so much happiness, he addressed me in his own way: ‘Trr! Trr! Trr!’ getting up out of politeness, trying, despite his mangy state, to arch his back in the hope that I should stroke him. But the pity I felt for him, though great, could not go as far as that. The joy of being caressed he was never to know again. But in compensation it occurred to me that it would be kind to end his life of pain by giving him a gentle, dreamful death. An hour later, Sylvester, my servant, who had bought some chloroform, drew him gently into our stable, and induced him to lie down on some warm hay in an osier basket which was destined to be his mortuary chamber. Our preparations did not disturb him: we had rolled a card into a cone-shaped form, as we had seen the ambulance surgeon do; he had looked at us with a contented look, thinking he had at last found a lodging and people who had pity on him, new owners who would shelter him.‘Despite the horror of his disease, I stooped over him and stroked him, and, always caressing him, I induced him to lie still, and to bury his little nose in the cone of cardboard; he, a little surprised at first, and sniffing the strange, potent odour with alarm, ended however in doing what I wished with such docility that I hesitated to continue my work. The annihilation of a thinking creature is, equally with annihilation of man, a cruel and responsible thing, and contains the same revolting mystery. And death, besides, carries in itself so much majesty that it is capable of giving grandeur in an instant to the most tiny and finite creatures, as soon as its shadow descends on them. Once he raised his poor head to look at me fixedly; our eyes met, his with an expressive interrogation, an intense anxiety, asked me, “What is it that you do? You whom I know so little, but towhom I trusted—what is it that you do to me?” And I still hesitated; but his throat inclined downwards, and his face rested on my hand, which I did not withdraw; stupefaction had begun to steal over him, and I hoped that he would not look at me again.‘And yet, yes, once again! Cats, as the village people here say, have their lives united to their bodies. In one last struggle for life his eyes met mine; across his mortal semi-sleep he seemed now to perceive and understand: “Ah! it was to kill me, then? Well, I let you do it! It is too late—I sleep!”‘In truth, I feared I had done ill. In this world, where we know nothing surely of anything, it is not even allowed us to let pity take this shape. His last look, infinitely sad, even whilst glazing in death, continued to pursue me with reproach. “Why,” it said, “why interfere with my fate? Without you I should have dragged my life on a little longer, had a few more little thoughts. I had still strength to jump up on a window-sill, where the dogs could not reach me; where I was not too cold in the morning, especially if the sun shone there. I still passed some bearable hours watching the movement in the street, seeing other cats come and go, having consciousness of what was doing round me, whilst now there is nothing for me but to rot away for ever into something which will have no memory.Now I am no more!” Truly, I should have recollected that the feeblest and poorest things prefer to linger on under the most miserable conditions, prefer no matter what suffering to the terror of being nothing, ofbeing no more.’

‘Despite the horror of his disease, I stooped over him and stroked him, and, always caressing him, I induced him to lie still, and to bury his little nose in the cone of cardboard; he, a little surprised at first, and sniffing the strange, potent odour with alarm, ended however in doing what I wished with such docility that I hesitated to continue my work. The annihilation of a thinking creature is, equally with annihilation of man, a cruel and responsible thing, and contains the same revolting mystery. And death, besides, carries in itself so much majesty that it is capable of giving grandeur in an instant to the most tiny and finite creatures, as soon as its shadow descends on them. Once he raised his poor head to look at me fixedly; our eyes met, his with an expressive interrogation, an intense anxiety, asked me, “What is it that you do? You whom I know so little, but towhom I trusted—what is it that you do to me?” And I still hesitated; but his throat inclined downwards, and his face rested on my hand, which I did not withdraw; stupefaction had begun to steal over him, and I hoped that he would not look at me again.

‘And yet, yes, once again! Cats, as the village people here say, have their lives united to their bodies. In one last struggle for life his eyes met mine; across his mortal semi-sleep he seemed now to perceive and understand: “Ah! it was to kill me, then? Well, I let you do it! It is too late—I sleep!”

‘In truth, I feared I had done ill. In this world, where we know nothing surely of anything, it is not even allowed us to let pity take this shape. His last look, infinitely sad, even whilst glazing in death, continued to pursue me with reproach. “Why,” it said, “why interfere with my fate? Without you I should have dragged my life on a little longer, had a few more little thoughts. I had still strength to jump up on a window-sill, where the dogs could not reach me; where I was not too cold in the morning, especially if the sun shone there. I still passed some bearable hours watching the movement in the street, seeing other cats come and go, having consciousness of what was doing round me, whilst now there is nothing for me but to rot away for ever into something which will have no memory.Now I am no more!” Truly, I should have recollected that the feeblest and poorest things prefer to linger on under the most miserable conditions, prefer no matter what suffering to the terror of being nothing, ofbeing no more.’

And he cannot forgive himself an act which was meant out of kindness, but in which the regard of the dying animal makes him see almost a crime. This tenderness for every breathing thing, this sentiment of the infinite, intense pity and mystery which accompany all forms of death is ever present with him, and nothing in its hour of dissolution is too small or too fragile, or too mean or too miserable, in his sight not to arouse this in him.

Read only the story of theSorrow of an Old Galley Slave.

This old man, who has been in prison many times, is at last being sent out to New Caledonia. ‘Old as I am, could they not have let me die in France?’ he says to our friend Yves (Mon Frére Yves), who is gone with his gunboat to take a band of these prisoners from the shore to the ship in which they are to make their voyage. Encouraged by the sympathy of Yves in his impending exile, the old felon shows him his one treasure; it is a little cage with a sparrow in it.

‘It is a tame bird, that knows his voice, and has learnt to sit on his shoulder. It was a year with him in his cell, and with great difficulty he has obtained permission to carry it with him to Caledonia, and, the permission once obtained, with what trouble he has made a little cage for it to travel in, to get the bits of wood and wire necessary, and a little green paint to brighten it and make it look pretty!‘“Poor sparrow!” says Yves to me afterwards when he tells me this tale. “It had only a few crumbs of prison bread such as they give to convicts, but he seems quite happy all the same. He jumps about gaily like any other bird.”‘Later still, as the train reaches the transport ship, he, who has forgotten for the moment the old man and the sparrow, passes by the former, who holds out to him the little cage. “Take it,” says the old prisoner, in a changed voice. “I give it to you; perhaps you may like to use it.”‘“No, no,” says Yves, astonished. “You know you are going to take it with you. The bird will be your little comrade there.”‘“Ah,” answers the old man, “he is no longer in it. Did you not know? He is no longer here.”‘And two tears of unspeakable grief rolled down his withered cheeks.‘During a rough moment of the crossing the door of the cage had blown open, the sparrow had fluttered, frightened, and in a second of time had fallen into the sea, his wings, which had been clipped, not being able to sustain him.‘Oh, that moment of horrible pain! To see the little thing struggle and sink, borne away on the tearing tide, and to be unable to do anything to save him! At first, in a natural movement of appeal, he was on the point of crying for help, of begging them to stop the boat, of entreating for pity, for aid; but his impulse is checked by the consciousness of his own personal degradation. Who would have pity on a miserable old man like him? Who would care for his little drowning bird? Who would hearken to his prayer?‘So he keeps silence, and is motionless in his place while the little grey body floats away on the frothing waves, quivering and struggling always against its fate. And he feels now all alone—frightfully alone for evermore, and his tears dull his sight, the slow salt tears of lonely despair, of a hopeless old age.‘And a young prisoner, chained to his side, laughs aloud to see an old man weep.’

‘“Poor sparrow!” says Yves to me afterwards when he tells me this tale. “It had only a few crumbs of prison bread such as they give to convicts, but he seems quite happy all the same. He jumps about gaily like any other bird.”

‘Later still, as the train reaches the transport ship, he, who has forgotten for the moment the old man and the sparrow, passes by the former, who holds out to him the little cage. “Take it,” says the old prisoner, in a changed voice. “I give it to you; perhaps you may like to use it.”

‘“No, no,” says Yves, astonished. “You know you are going to take it with you. The bird will be your little comrade there.”

‘“Ah,” answers the old man, “he is no longer in it. Did you not know? He is no longer here.”

‘And two tears of unspeakable grief rolled down his withered cheeks.

‘During a rough moment of the crossing the door of the cage had blown open, the sparrow had fluttered, frightened, and in a second of time had fallen into the sea, his wings, which had been clipped, not being able to sustain him.

‘Oh, that moment of horrible pain! To see the little thing struggle and sink, borne away on the tearing tide, and to be unable to do anything to save him! At first, in a natural movement of appeal, he was on the point of crying for help, of begging them to stop the boat, of entreating for pity, for aid; but his impulse is checked by the consciousness of his own personal degradation. Who would have pity on a miserable old man like him? Who would care for his little drowning bird? Who would hearken to his prayer?

‘So he keeps silence, and is motionless in his place while the little grey body floats away on the frothing waves, quivering and struggling always against its fate. And he feels now all alone—frightfully alone for evermore, and his tears dull his sight, the slow salt tears of lonely despair, of a hopeless old age.

‘And a young prisoner, chained to his side, laughs aloud to see an old man weep.’

Was anything more beautiful than this ever written in any tongue?

Loti stretches to a nobler and a truer scope thenihil humani a me alienum puto. To him nothing which has in it the capacity of attachment and of suffering is alien; and it is this sentiment, this sympathy which breathe through all his written pages like the fragrance of some pressed and perfumed blossom. It is these which make his influence so admirable, so precious, in an age which is choked to the throat in suffocating egotisms and vanities, and bound hand and foot in the ligaments of a preposterous and purblind formalism of exclusive self-adoration. Can any reader arise from reading the page which follows without henceforth giving at least a thought of pity to the brave beasts of the pasture who perish that the human crowds may feed?

‘In the midst of the Indian Ocean one sad evening when the wind began to rise.‘Two poor bullocks remained of a dozen which we had taken on board at Singapore, to be eaten on the voyage. These last two has been saved for the greatest need, because the voyage was protracted and the ship blown backward by the wicked monsoon.‘They were two poor creatures, weak, thin, piteous to see, their skin already broken about their starting bones by the rude shaking of the waves. They had journeyed thus many days, turning their backs to their native pastures, whither no one would ever lead them again; tied up shortly by the horns, side by side, lowering their heads meekly every time that a wave broke over them and drenched their bodies in its chilly wash; their eyes dull and sad, they munched together at bad hay, soaked and salted; condemned beasts, already struck off the roll of the living, but fated to suffer long before they would be killed—to suffer from cold, from blows, from sickness, from wet, from want of movement, from fear.‘The evening of which I speak was especially melancholy. At sea there are many such evenings, when ugly, livid clouds drag along on the horizon as the light fades, when the wind arises and the night threatens to be bad. Then when one feels oneself isolated in the midst of these infinite waters, one is seized with a vague terror that twilight on shore would never bring with it even in the dreariest places. And these two poor bullocks, creatures of the meadow and its fresh herbage, more out of their element than men on this heaving and rolling desert, and not having like us any hope to sustain them, were forced, despite their limited intelligence, to endure in their manner all this suffering, and must have seen confusedly the image of their approaching death. They chewed the cud with the slowness of sickness, their big, joyless eyes fixed on the sinister distances of the sea. One by one their companions had been struck down on these boards by their side; during two weeks they had lived alone, drawn together by their loneliness, leaning one against another in the rolling of the ship, rubbing their horns against each other in friendship.‘The person charged with provisioning the ship came to me on the bridge, and said to me in the usual formula: “Captain, they are about to kill a bullock.”‘I received him ill, though it was not his fault that he came on such an errand. The slaughter of animals took place just underneath the bridge, and in vain one turned away one’s eyes or tried to think of other things, or gazed over the waste of waters. One could not avoid hearing the blow of the mallet struck between the horns in the centre of the poor forehead held down so low to the floor by an iron buckle; then the crash of the falling animal, who drops on the bridge with a clashing of bone upon wood. And immediately after it is bled, skinned, cut in pieces; an atrocious, nauseous odour comes from its opened belly, and all around the planks of the vessel, so clean at other times, are soiled and inundated with blood and filth.‘Well, the moment had come to slay one of the bullocks. A circle of sailors was formed round the iron ring to which it was to be fastened for execution. Of the pair they choose the weaker, one which was almost dying and which allowed itself to be led away without resistance.‘Then the other one turned its head to follow its companion with its melancholy eyes, and seeing that its friend was led to the fatal corner where all the others had fallen,it understood; a gleam of comprehension came into the poor bowed head, and it lowed loudly in its sore distress. Oh, that moan of this poor, solitary creature! It was one of the most grievous sounds that I have ever heard, and at the same time one of the most mysterious. There were in it such deep reproach to us, to men, and yet a sort of heart-broken resignation, I know not what, of restrained and stifled grief, as if he, mourning, knew that his lament was useless and that his appeal would be heard by none. “Ah, yes,” it said, “the inevitable hour has come for him who was my last remaining brother, who came with me from our home far away, there where we used to run together through the grass. And my turn will come soon, and not a living thing in the world will have any pity either for him or me.”‘But I who heard had pity.‘I was even beside myself with pity, and a mad impulse came over me to go and take his big, sickly, mangy head to rest it on my heart, since that is our instinctive caress by which to offer the illusion of protection to those who suffer or who perish. But truly indeed he could look for no succour fromanyone, for even I, whose soul had thrilled with pain at the intense anguish of his cry, even I remained motionless and impassive in my place, only turning away my eyes. For the despair of a mere animal should one change the direction of a vessel and prevent three hundred men from eating their share of fresh meat? One would be considered a lunatic if one only thought of such a thing for a moment.‘However, a little cabin boy, who, perhaps, was also himself alone in the world, and had found none to pity him, had heard the cry—had heard it and been moved by it like myself to the depths of his soul. He went up to the bullock and very softly stroked its muzzle. He might have said to it, had he thought to do so,—‘“They will all die too, those who are waiting to eat your flesh to-morrow. Yes, all of them, even the youngest and strongest, and maybe their last hour will be more terrible than yours, and with longer pain. Perhaps it would be better for them if they too had a blow of the pole-axe on their foreheads.”‘The animal returned affectionately the boy’s caress, gazing at him with grateful, kind eyes, and licking his hand.’

‘In the midst of the Indian Ocean one sad evening when the wind began to rise.

‘Two poor bullocks remained of a dozen which we had taken on board at Singapore, to be eaten on the voyage. These last two has been saved for the greatest need, because the voyage was protracted and the ship blown backward by the wicked monsoon.

‘They were two poor creatures, weak, thin, piteous to see, their skin already broken about their starting bones by the rude shaking of the waves. They had journeyed thus many days, turning their backs to their native pastures, whither no one would ever lead them again; tied up shortly by the horns, side by side, lowering their heads meekly every time that a wave broke over them and drenched their bodies in its chilly wash; their eyes dull and sad, they munched together at bad hay, soaked and salted; condemned beasts, already struck off the roll of the living, but fated to suffer long before they would be killed—to suffer from cold, from blows, from sickness, from wet, from want of movement, from fear.

‘The evening of which I speak was especially melancholy. At sea there are many such evenings, when ugly, livid clouds drag along on the horizon as the light fades, when the wind arises and the night threatens to be bad. Then when one feels oneself isolated in the midst of these infinite waters, one is seized with a vague terror that twilight on shore would never bring with it even in the dreariest places. And these two poor bullocks, creatures of the meadow and its fresh herbage, more out of their element than men on this heaving and rolling desert, and not having like us any hope to sustain them, were forced, despite their limited intelligence, to endure in their manner all this suffering, and must have seen confusedly the image of their approaching death. They chewed the cud with the slowness of sickness, their big, joyless eyes fixed on the sinister distances of the sea. One by one their companions had been struck down on these boards by their side; during two weeks they had lived alone, drawn together by their loneliness, leaning one against another in the rolling of the ship, rubbing their horns against each other in friendship.

‘The person charged with provisioning the ship came to me on the bridge, and said to me in the usual formula: “Captain, they are about to kill a bullock.”

‘I received him ill, though it was not his fault that he came on such an errand. The slaughter of animals took place just underneath the bridge, and in vain one turned away one’s eyes or tried to think of other things, or gazed over the waste of waters. One could not avoid hearing the blow of the mallet struck between the horns in the centre of the poor forehead held down so low to the floor by an iron buckle; then the crash of the falling animal, who drops on the bridge with a clashing of bone upon wood. And immediately after it is bled, skinned, cut in pieces; an atrocious, nauseous odour comes from its opened belly, and all around the planks of the vessel, so clean at other times, are soiled and inundated with blood and filth.

‘Well, the moment had come to slay one of the bullocks. A circle of sailors was formed round the iron ring to which it was to be fastened for execution. Of the pair they choose the weaker, one which was almost dying and which allowed itself to be led away without resistance.

‘Then the other one turned its head to follow its companion with its melancholy eyes, and seeing that its friend was led to the fatal corner where all the others had fallen,it understood; a gleam of comprehension came into the poor bowed head, and it lowed loudly in its sore distress. Oh, that moan of this poor, solitary creature! It was one of the most grievous sounds that I have ever heard, and at the same time one of the most mysterious. There were in it such deep reproach to us, to men, and yet a sort of heart-broken resignation, I know not what, of restrained and stifled grief, as if he, mourning, knew that his lament was useless and that his appeal would be heard by none. “Ah, yes,” it said, “the inevitable hour has come for him who was my last remaining brother, who came with me from our home far away, there where we used to run together through the grass. And my turn will come soon, and not a living thing in the world will have any pity either for him or me.”

‘But I who heard had pity.

‘I was even beside myself with pity, and a mad impulse came over me to go and take his big, sickly, mangy head to rest it on my heart, since that is our instinctive caress by which to offer the illusion of protection to those who suffer or who perish. But truly indeed he could look for no succour fromanyone, for even I, whose soul had thrilled with pain at the intense anguish of his cry, even I remained motionless and impassive in my place, only turning away my eyes. For the despair of a mere animal should one change the direction of a vessel and prevent three hundred men from eating their share of fresh meat? One would be considered a lunatic if one only thought of such a thing for a moment.

‘However, a little cabin boy, who, perhaps, was also himself alone in the world, and had found none to pity him, had heard the cry—had heard it and been moved by it like myself to the depths of his soul. He went up to the bullock and very softly stroked its muzzle. He might have said to it, had he thought to do so,—

‘“They will all die too, those who are waiting to eat your flesh to-morrow. Yes, all of them, even the youngest and strongest, and maybe their last hour will be more terrible than yours, and with longer pain. Perhaps it would be better for them if they too had a blow of the pole-axe on their foreheads.”

‘The animal returned affectionately the boy’s caress, gazing at him with grateful, kind eyes, and licking his hand.’

The cynic will demur that this compassion for cattle will not prevent the human eater from consuming hisbœuf à la mode, or his slice from the sirloin, with appetite. But even if cattle must be slaughtered, how much might their torture be alleviated were men not wholly indifferent to it. The frightful infamies of the cattle trade on sea would be ended were none bought after a voyage. The hideous deaths by drought and by cold, all over the plains of South America, would be no more. No longer would a single living bullock endure thirty agonising operations on his quivering body, when fastened down to the demonstrating or experimenting table of veterinary students. It is not so much death itself, when swift, sure, almost painless, which is terrible, as it is the agony, protracted, infinite, frightful, incalculable,which is inflicted for the passions, the pleasure, or the profit of men.

Were such sympathy as breathes through theBook of Pity and of Deathlargely felt, all the needless cruelty inflicted by the human race, that mere carelessness and indifference of which the world is so full, would gradually be reduced until it might in time cease entirely. The cruelty of the rich to horses from mere want of thought alone is appalling. Few know or care how their stables are managed, what is the maximum of work which should be demanded of a horse, and what the torture inflicted by certain methods of breaking-in and harnessing and driving. Frequently are to be seen the advertisements by carriage-makers of ‘one-horse broughams, warranted for hill work and to carry four persons, with, if desired, a basket on roof for railway luggage.’ That these abominable loads are given to one horse continually there can be no doubt, as these announcements are frequent in all the newspapers, and never seem to elicit any wonder or censure. A shabby and vicious economy constantly gives, in this extravagant and spendthrift generation, a load to one poor horse which would certainly, in a generation earlier, and undoubtedly in a century ago, only have been given to a pair of horses or even to two pairs with postillions. Speed, also, being insisted on, no matter what load is dragged, the race of carriage-horses grows weaker and weaker in build and stamina. What woman, either, in any capital of the world, thinks for a moment of keeping her horses out in rain and snow, motionless for hours, whilst she is chattering in some warm and fragrant drawing-room, or dancing and flirting in some cotillon? No attentionis ever given to the preferences, tastes and affections of animals, which yet are undoubtedly of great strength and tenacity in them, not only towards their owners, but often, also, towards their own kind. I am, at the present moment, driving a mare who was always driven with her sister, who died eighteen months ago. She does not forget her sister, and the stable companion given her instead she hates, and endeavours, with all her might, to kick and bite across the pole and in the stalls. I owned also a pony so attached to his comrade that they could live in the same loose-box together, and when the companion died, this pony was miserable, whinnied and neighed perpetually, lost health, and in a few months died also. In life he was the humble and devoted slave of his brother, would fondle him, clean him, follow him about in all directions, and show to him every testimony of affection possible in one creature to another. Yet such feelings as these, although very common in animals, are never remembered or considered for an instant, and animals of all kinds are sold from owner to owner, and hustled from place to place, with no more regard than if they were chairs and tables. What they suffer from strange voices, new homes, and unfamiliar treatment no one inquires, for no one cares. Convenience and profit are all which are considered. There is little or no remembrance of the idiosyncrasy of each creature. The ecstatic, ardent, nervous temperament of the dog; the timid, imaginative, impulsive mind of the horse; the shrinking shyness of the sheep, the attachment to place and people of the wildest or silliest creature when once kindly treated and long domesticated—all these things are never recollectedor considered in dealing with them. Hard and fast rules are laid down for them, by which they, in their various ways, are forced to abide. Their natural instincts and desires are treated as crimes, and their longings and preferences are unnoticed or thwarted. Who ever thinks of or cares for the injustice and cruelty concentrated in that single phrase, ‘The hounds were whipped off,’ or its pendant, ‘The fox was broken up,’ etc., etc.? They are sentences so common, and so often used, that the horrible cruelty involved in them has altogether passed out of notice. Men and women grow up amidst cruelty, and are so accustomed to it, that they no more perceive it than they do the living organisms in the air they breathe or in the water they drink. Were it otherwise they could not walk down Ludgate Hill or up Montmartre without unbearable pain.

The grief of the ox driven from his pastures, of the cow divided from her calf, of the dog sent away from his master, of the lion torn from his desert or jungle, of the ape brought to die of nostalgia in cold climes, of the eagle chained down in inaction and gloom, of all the innumerable creatures taken from their natural life or their early associations, because the whim, the appetite, the caprice, the pleasure or the avarice of men is gratified or tempted by their pain, never moves anyone to pity. They are ‘subject-creatures’ in the human code, and what they may suffer, or may not suffer, is of no import; of less import even than the dying out of the Maoris, or the dwindling away of the Red Indian tribes, or the death of African porters on the caravan routes.

It is said that there is less cruelty now than in earliertimes, because some public spectacles of cruelty have been put down in many countries. But since this age is the most exacting in small things, the most egotistic, the most silly, and the most nervous which the world has seen, it is probable that its increased interference with animal liberty, and its increased fear of them (not to mention its many increased means of animal destruction and torture, whether for sport or experiment) have diminished their freedom and multiplied their sacrifice. Freedom of choice and act is the first condition of animal as of human happiness. How many animals in a million have even relative freedom in any moment of their lives? No choice is ever permitted to them; and all their most natural instincts are denied or made subject to authority.

If old pictures and old drawings and etchings are any criterion of the modes of life of their own day, there can be no doubt that animals were much freer and much more intimately associated with men in earlier times than they are now. In their representations we see no banqueting scene without the handsome dogs stretched upon the rushes or before the daïs; no village fair without its merry mongrels running in and out between the rustics’ legs: no triumph of emperor or ceremonial of cardinal or pope without the splendid retriever and the jewel-collared hound: in the pictures of the Nativity the animals are always represented as friendly and interested spectators; in scenes from the lives of saints the introduction of animals wild and tame are constant; therefore, as we know that all these old painters and etchers depicted invariably what they saw around them, it is certain that they were accustomed to seein their daily haunts animals made part and parcel of men’s common life. Those animals were roughly treated, may be, as men themselves then were, but they were regarded as comrades and companions, not as alien creatures to be despised and unremembered except for use and profit. When the knight offered up his falcon his heart was rent, as in parting from a brother most beloved.

It is a fearful thought that were not animals considered to contribute to the convenience, the profit and the amusement of men, they would not be allowed to live for a half-century longer. They would be destroyed as ruthlessly as the buffalo of the United States of America has already been, and all birds would be exterminated as well without remorse. There is no honour, no decency shown in the treatment of animals and birds by men. When Menelek sent, as a gift to Carnot, his two tame young lions, who had been free in his rude African palace, and were only eighteen months old, the receiver of the gift could give them nothing better than a narrow cage in the Jardin des Plantes.

Even the lovely plumage and the great agricultural utility of the thistle-seed-eating goldfinch does not save him from being trapped, shot, poisoned, caged, as the ignorance, greed, or pleasure of his human foes may choose. Nothing is too large or too small, too noble or too innocent, to escape the rapacity, the brutality, and the egotism of men; and in the schools all the world over there is never a syllable said which could by suggestion or influence awaken the minds of the attendant pupils to a wider, gentler, and truer sense of the relations of animals and birds to thehuman race. Indeed, it would be almost ridiculous to attempt to do so when no princeling makes a royal visit or an Eastern tour without slaughtering, by hundreds and by thousands, tame birds and untamed beasts; when in every market and every shambles the most atrocious suffering is inflicted openly and often needlessly; when the imperial and royal persons find their chief diversion and distraction in rending the tender flesh of hares and pheasants, of elk and chamois with shot and bullet; and when the new scientific lexicons opened to them teach children how to make a white rabbit ‘blush’ by the severance of certain sensitive nerves, and bid them realise that in the pursuit of ‘knowledge,’ or even of fantastic conjecture, it is worthy and wise to inflict the most hellish tortures on the most helpless and harmless of sentient creatures. To sacrifice for experiment, or pleasure, or gain, all the other races of creation, is the doctrine taught by precept and example from the thrones the lecture-desks, the gunrooms, and the laboratory-tables of the world. It is not a doctrine which can make either a generous or a just generation. Youth is callous and selfish of itself, and by its natural instincts; and all the example and tuition given from palace, pulpit and professorial chair are such as to harden its callousness and confirm its selfishness.

Even the marvellous sagacity, docility and kindness of the elephant do not protect him from being slain in tens of thousands, either for the mere value of his tusks, or for the mere pleasure and pride taken by men in his slaughter. Even so inoffensive a creature as the wild sheep of the hills of Asia is mercilessly hunted down and shot by European sportsmen,although his carcass is absolutely of no use or value whatever when found, and it is usually lost by the shot creature falling down a precipice or into some inaccessible nullah. Nearer at home the chamois and ibex have been so treated that they will ere long be extinct on the European continent. To wild creatures there is no kind of compassion or of justice ever shown. I have known an officer relate without shame how, when he was once sleeping in a tent on the plains of India, a leopard entered between the folds of the canvas, and as he awoke stood still and looked at him, then quietly turned round and went out again; he stretched out his arm for his revolver, and shot, as it passed out into the air, the creature which had spared him. There is no decency, no common ordinary feeling or conscientiousness, in men in their dealings with animals. They publish their advertisements without compunction of ‘geldings’ and ‘bullocks,’ and inflict castration wholesale whenever they deem it to their profit or convenience to do so, whether their prey be a bull or a cock, a colt or a puppy. When the gourmand feels his ‘belly with fat capon lined,’ the atrocious suffering by which the capon has been swollen to unnatural obesity never troubles him for a moment, nor when he eats his pâté de Strasbourg has he any feelings or remembrance for the geese with their webbed feet nailed down to the boards before the sweltering fires.

England has lately lamented the loss of a young man of royal birth, and of gentle and kindly disposition, who died under circumstances which touched the national sentiment. Yet the Duke of Clarence, of whom it was said that he would not have willinglywronged a living being, passed his last days on earth, the days in which he already felt the chills and languor of impending sickness, in the slaughter of tame birds. There is something shocking in the thought that, during the last hours in which an amiable youth enjoyed the gladness of the air and the freedom of the woods, he should have been solely occupied in taking the life of innocent and happy creatures, reared merely to offer this miserable diversion to him and his. This degraded sport, the curse, the shame and the peril of England, has never had passed on it a commentary more severe, a sarcasm more scathing than the words, ‘There will be no shooting until after the royal funeral,’ which were announced at, and of, innumerable country-house parties; the sacrifice of the idolised amusement being emphasised as the most complete expression of woe and regret possible to the nation. It would be ridiculous, were it not sickening, that in a land where men prate from morning till night of public duty, and make boast of their many virtues, public and private, no shame is attached to the shameful fact that all its gentlemen of high degree, all its males who have leisure and large means, find no other pursuit or pleasure possible in autumn and winter than the innocent slaughter or maiming of winged creatures, reared merely to furnish them with such diversion.

It is inconceivable that reasonable beings, who claim to exercise preponderance in the influence and direction of public affairs, should not perceive how injurious and debasing as an example is this foolish and cruel pursuit which they have allowed to obtain over them all the force of habit, and all the sanctityof a religion. Common rights are sacrificed, harmless privileges abolished, old paths blocked, pleasant time-consecrated rights of way are forbidden through copse and furze and covert, all wild natural woodland life is destroyed by the traps, poisons and guns of the keepers and their myrmidons, and incessant torture of woodland animals, and incessant irritation of rural populations go on without pause or check, in order that princes, gentlemen andrastaquouèresmay pass week after week, month after month, year after year, in this kind of carnage which is delightful to them, and at which their women unashamed are encouraged to assist. ‘Walking with the guns’ has now become a favourite and fashionable feminine amusement. In the middle of the day both sexes indulge in those rich dishes and stimulating drinks, which are their daily fare, and carry typhoid fever into their veins; and after luncheon, replete and content, they all return to the organised slaughter in the leafless woodlands, or the heather-covered moors, or the ‘happy autumn fields.’ The gladiatorial shows of Rome might be more brutal, but were at least more manly than this ‘sport,’ which is the only active religion of the so-called ‘God-serving classes.’ It is hereditary, like scrofula; the devouring ambition of the baby-heir of a great house is to be old enough to go out with the keepers; and instinct against such slaughter, if it existed in his childish soul, would be killed by ridicule; example, precept and education are all bent to one end, to render him a slayer of creatures wild and tame. If he make later on the tour of the world, his path over its continents will be littered by dead game, large and small, from the noble elephant to the simplewild sheep, from the peaceful and graminivorous elk to the hand-fed pheasant. There is no escape for him; even if he have little natural taste for it, he will affect to have such taste, knowing that he will otherwise be despised by his comrades, and be esteemed alusus naturæin his generation. He will not dare to be ‘odd’; the gun is the weapon of the gentleman, as in other days was the rapier or the sword; the gunroom is hisAcademe; he is learned in the choice of explosive bullets, and can explain precisely to any fair companion the manner in which they rend and tear the tender flesh of the forest animals.

Read this exploit of sport, printed by a Mr Guillemard, apparently without the slightest sense of shame. He is in the pursuit of ‘bighorn’ (ovis nivicola), animals, perfectly innocent and harmless, living in the wilds of Kamschatka.

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