CHAPTER V.

CHAMELEONS, LIZARDS, AND MAGPIES.

Once upon a time we happened to be at the port of Santa-Maria in the Bay of Cadiz, a little village which seems cut out of the white loaf of Spain, between the indigo of the sea and the lapis-lazuli of the sky. It was noon, and on that particular day such a warm noon that the sun appeared to be amusing himself by dropping spoonfuls of melted lead on the heads of travellers, as the garrison of a beleaguered fortress, by some well-planned artifice, pours boiling oil or pitch on the heads of its assailants. This picturesque little port is made famous by the celebrated song in the Andalusian _patois_ of Murillo-Bravo, “The Bulls of Puerto,” in which the gallant boatman says to the lady about to embark, “Lleve V. la patita.” We hummed the refrain in a voice which sings no less falsely in Spanish than in French, following with our eyes, as we sang, the line, straight as the selvage of a piece of linen, which was cast by the shadow at the foot of the wall.

It was a market day, and foreign commodities of all sorts were exposed for sale on the square, which were of colors gorgeous enough to enchant Ziem himself. Garlands of fiery-red peppers swung above deep-green melons, some of which had been cut in halves to show the rose-colored pulp within, dotted with black spots like a shell from the South Seas. Heavy clusters of clear, yellow grapes, like amber beads, reminding one by their fair transparency of Turkish rosaries, hung by the side of bunches of a bluish color, and others which were of an amethystine hue shading into deeper purple. Chickpeas in weedy mats rounded their globes of paly gold; pomegranates, bursting their rinds, showed caskets of rubies within. The fruit-sellers, with their scarlet and yellow capes, their black silk petticoats, bare feet thrust into satin slippers,—and what feet, hardly bigger than a Savoy biscuit!—their paper fans held against the cheek to take the place of a parasol, sat proudly beside their vegetables chattering with that Andalusian volubility which is so full of grace. Here and there some passing gallant, balancing himself on the point of his white cane, his jacket swinging from his shoulders, a broad sash from Gibraltar encircling his waist from armpit to hips, his elastic breeches open at the knee, and leathern boots from Ronda unbuttoned all the way up the leg, in what seems to be the height of the style, lingered a moment to cast a seductive glance while rolling between thumb and forefinger his cigarette of alcoy paper. It was one of those blinding effects of southern light and color which would be called an exaggeration of nature if any artist should attempt to reproduce in full its crude and dazzling truth.

We sought a refuge from the fiery sun shower in the patio of The Three Moorish Kings. A _patio_, as all the world knows, is an inside court surrounded by arcades, whose arrangement reminds one of the ancient _impluvium_. In place of a roof it is shaded by a linen awning striped with gay colors, called in Spanish a _velarium_, which is kept constantly wet, in order to secure greater coolness. In the middle of this patio a slender thread of water rose and fell from a marble basin, throwing a fine spray over boxes of myrtles, pomegranates and oleanders, which were grouped about it. Sofas covered with horse-hair, and cane-seated chairs, were scattered about under the arcades. Guitars, suspended on the walls, cast brilliant reflections out of the shadow, as the light glinted on their varnished surfaces, and beside them hung the brown disks of tambourines.

These patios are common in the Moorish houses of Algeria, and no better contrivance to secure coolness can be imagined. They are a device of the Arabs adopted by the Spaniards. Upon the capitals of the smaller columns, in many dwellings, can still be read verses from the Koran glorifying Allah, or laudations of some caliph long ago driven back into the heart of Africa and forgotten.

After draining an unglazed jug of cold water we retired to one of the rooms opening on the patio for a siesta. Our drowsy eyes wandered to the ceiling of the low chamber, which, like all Spanish ceilings, was whitewashed, and ornamented in the middle by a rosette picked out into yellow, black, and red sections like the sides of a ball. From this rosette hung a cord meant, without doubt, to hold a lamp; and along this cord a mysterious object was moving upward. We fitted our eyeglass into its place under the arch of our eyebrow, and at last made out that the thing, which with so much pains was climbing on the cord toward the ceiling, was a kind of lizard, of a grayish yellow, and a shape which had about it something monstrous, recalling in miniature those vast Saurians which disappeared from earth at the close of the antediluvian epoch.

The maid of the inn was summoned,—Pepa, Lola, or Casilda, we cannot recall the exact name, but are ready to swear that she was an excellent person,—and she explained that the creature on the cord was a chameleon.

Lola,—if Lola it was,—taking pity on our ignorance, and perhaps not sorry to exhibit her own zoölogical knowledge, said to us in an instructive way, “These animals change their color, you know, according to the place where they happen to be, and they live on air.”

During our brief conversation the chameleons (for there were two) continued their ascension of the cord. Nothing more absurd than their appearance could be imagined. It must be admitted that the chameleon is not beautiful, and, although people say that Nature does everything well, it strikes us that by taking a very little more trouble she might easily have made a prettier animal than he. But, like all great artists, Nature has her caprices, and she occasionally amuses herself by modelling grotesque shapes. The eyes of the chameleon, which are almost completely detached from the head, are fitted into external membranous sacs, and have complete independence of movement. They can look to the right with one and to the left with the other, cast one up to the skies and the other down to the floor, producing thereby a variety of squints which have the most extraordinary effect. A swollen pouch under the jaw, not unlike a goitre, gives the poor animal an air of haughty complacency and stupid conceit, of which he is as unconscious as he is innocent. His awkwardly formed paws make a projecting angle above the line of his back, and his movements are alike ungraceful and meaningless.

One of the chameleons had now reached the top of the string and the centre of the rosette. Putting out a pitiful little paw, he tried the ceiling to see if it were possible to cling to it, and in that way to effect an escape. In making this experiment, for the hundredth time perhaps, he squinted with his eyes in the most desperate and touching way, as if invoking aid from heaven and earth; then, seeing no hope of egress on that side, he slowly began to descend the cord again, with a sad, resigned, and piteous look,—emblem of useless labor, a Sisyphus of wasted energies. Half-way down the two creatures met, exchanged glances meant to be friendly, perhaps, but horrible from their squints, and for a moment or two formed a group which was like a hideous bunch on the perpendicular line of the string.

After a few ludicrous contortions the group disentangled, each chameleon continuing its journey, the one which was coming down reaching the end of the cord, stretching out a hind leg, sounding the air cautiously and finding no place of support, drawing it in again with a discouraged movement whose heart-breaking and absurd melancholy baffles all description. By one of those associations of ideas which cannot be accounted for, but which the mind conceives without understanding why, the chameleons reminded me of one of Goya’s gloomiest etchings, in which are represented spectres, who, with feeble and shadowy arms, are trying to lift heavy stones which roll back upon and crush them,—an unequal conflict of weakness with destiny.

In order to deliver these poor animals from their sufferings we bought for them a rough sort of cage. It was of good size, and, once installed therein, they were able to dispense with those acrobatic exercises which seemed to make them so miserable. As to the question of food, with all respect for Southern frugality, this living on air by its very name seems insufficient. A Spanish lover may, perhaps, be able to breakfast on a glass of water, dine on a cigarette, and sup on a tune from his mandolin; but the tastes of chameleons are less refined, and they crave and devour flies, which they catch, in the oddest manner, by darting out from the throat a sort of long lance covered with a viscous slime, which adheres to the wings of the insect, and, when drawn in again, carries him bodily along with it into the gullet.

Do chameleons change their color according to the place where they happen to be? In the literal sense of the words they do not, but their skins, broken by little facet-shaped roughnesses, absorb the hues of surrounding objects more easily than other bodies do. Placed near a red thing, or a yellow or a green one, the chameleon seems to steep itself in that color, but, after all, it is but an effect of refraction. A plate of polished metal will be colored in the same way; there is no real power of absorption. In its ordinary state the chameleon is of a gray-green or a yellowish gray. However, those who have a taste for marvels may, if they like, assert that the chameleon changes its color at will, and is thus the proper emblem of political versatility; but we must be permitted to say in our turn that after the minutest observations, continued for a long time, we are convinced that chameleons are entirely indifferent to affairs of state and everything connected with them.

We were anxious to carry our chameleons home with us, but the autumn was near at hand, and, though the sun still had a great deal of heat as we followed the coast northward from Tarifa to Port Vendres, passing by Gibraltar, Malaga, Alicante, Almeria, Valencia, and Barcelona, the poor beasts faded away before our very sight. As they wasted, their eyes seemed to project from their heads, and day by day to increase in prominence. Their squint increased; under their loose and flabby skins their tiny skeletons grew more and more distinct with every mile. It was a piteous sight,—these consumptive lizards feebly going through the death dance, and too weak even to thrust their sticky tongues out for the flies which we collected for them in the galley of the steamer. They died within a few days of each other, and the blue Mediterranean was their grave.

From chameleons to lizards the transition is easy. Our youngest daughter once received the present of a lizard which had been caught at Fontainebleau, and which became very fond of her. Jacques’ color was the most beautiful Veronese green that can be imagined. His eyes were very bright, his scales overlapped each other with the most perfect regularity, and his movements were extraordinarily swift. He never left his little mistress, and usually lay hidden in a loop of her hair near the comb. Nestled there, he accompanied her to the play, to walk, to evening parties, without once betraying his presence; only, when the young girl was playing on the piano, he would desert his retreat, descend her shoulder and creep out to the end of the arm, always preferring the right hand, which plays the air, to the left, which makes the accompaniment,—thus testifying to his preference for melody over harmony.

Jacques’ house was a glass box lined with moss, which had once contained Russian cigars from the Eliseïeph manufactory. His private life may therefore be justly said to have lain open to the public. His food consisted of drops of milk, which he preferred to take from the end of his mistress’s finger. He died of grief and hunger during her absence on a journey, to which she had not dared to expose him on account of the severity of the weather.

There is nothing to be told of Balylas, the sparrow, but that he died. One blow under his wing, from a claw, finished his career, and he was buried in a domino-box.

It now only remains for us to describe Margot, the magpie,—a most intelligent and chatty gossip, worthy to live in an osier cage in the window of a concierge and be fed with white cheese. We wasted much time in trying to teach her the dead languages. She never could be taught to pronounce correctly the Latin for “Bonjour,” as did the Pompeiian magpies. She could not say “Ave,” but she said a great many other things. She was a most comical and entertaining bird, who would play at hide-and-go-seek with the children, dance the Pyrrhic dance, and fearlessly attack any number of cats, absolutely running after them and nipping the ends of their tails; which malicious act she always supplemented with a loud burst of laughter. She was as thievish as the “Gazza Ladra” herself, and equal to getting ten servants hung on false accusations. In the twinkling of an eye she would rifle every knife, fork, and spoon from the table. Money, scissors, thimbles, anything that glittered, she would seize upon and swiftly fly away with to her hiding place. As the corner where she deposited her stolen goods was well known to us all, we allowed her to do this; but the servants of a neighboring family were less indulgent, and they killed her one day because, as they stated, she had stolen a pair of new sheets,—an accusation which made us think of that minute cat in “How to succeed,” which devoured four pounds of butter and only weighed three quarters of a pound after it! The master and mistress of the house scouted the idea, and turned the fools of servants off at once; but this reprisal did not mend the matter, Dame Margot’s neck was none the less wrung. She was lamented by all the neighborhood, which had been kept in a state of constant diversion by her good humor and her pranks.