Suddenly Mademoiselle Honorine, Doctor Heraclius’ housekeeper, rushed in like a whirlwind and sank into a chair, overcome by emotion. Then, when she saw that they were all thoroughly intrigued, she burst out:
“No, it’s too much! Whatever happens I’ll not stop any longer in that house.” And then she hid her face in her hands and began to sob. A moment or two later, when she was a little calmer, she went on:
“After all, it’s not the poor man’s fault if he’s mad.”
“Who?” asked Mademoiselle Labotte.
“Why, her master, Doctor Heraclius,” put in Mademoiselle Victoire. “So what the Dean said is true then—your master has gone queer in the head?”
“I should just think so!” exclaimed Mademoiselle Anastasie. “The Curé, talking to the Abbé Rosencroix the other day, declared that Doctor Heraclius was a proper reprobate, that he worshipped animals, after the style of a man called Pythagoras who, so it seems, was a heretic as wicked as Luther.”
“What’s happened now?” interrupted Mademoiselle Gertrude. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Well, just think,” said Honorine, drying her eyes on the corner of her apron, “for nearly six months now my poor master has been mad about animals. He believes that he has been created and placed in the world to serve them, he speaks to them as though they were sensible human beings, and one would almost believe that he gets an answer from inside them somehow. Anyway, yesterday evening I saw that mice were eating my provisions and I put a mousetrap in the larder. This morning I found I’d caught one. I called the cat and was just going to give the little beast to him when the master rushed in like a madman. He snatched the trap out of my hands and let the brute loose in the middle of my pickles. And when I got angry he turned on me and treated me as one wouldn’t treat a rag and bone man.”
There was a tense silence for some minutes and then Mademoiselle Honorine added:
“After all, I don’t blame the poor man. He’s mad.”
Two hours later the story of the Doctor and the mouse had gone the round of every kitchen in Balançon. At lunchtime all the bourgeois were telling it to each other, and at eight o’clock M. le Premier repeated it, as he drank his coffee, to six magistrates who had been dining with him. These gentlemen, seated in solemn attitudes, listened dreamily, without smiling, but with grave nods of their heads. At eleven o’clock the Prefect, who was giving a party, was worried with it in front of six minor officials and when he asked the Warden for his opinion, the latter, who was parading his white tie and his propensity for mischief before group after group of guests, answered thus:
“After all, what does this prove, Prefect? Why, that if La Fontaine were still living, he could write a new fable entitled ‘The Philosopher’s Mouse,’ which would end up—‘The more foolish of the two is not the one one thinks.’ ”
XXVII
How Doctor Heraclius Did Not Agree with the Dauphin, Who, Having Saved a Monkey from Drowning, Threw It Back Again and Went Off to Find a Man to Save Instead
When Heraclius went out the following morning he noticed that everyone looked at him with curiosity as he passed and that people turned to glance twice at him. At first all this attention astonished him; he wondered what the reason of it was and thought that perhaps his doctrine had spread without his knowledge and that he was on the point of being appreciated by his fellow citizens. He was suddenly filled with a great tenderness towards these people, whom he already saw as his enthusiastic disciples, and he began to acknowledge them by smiling right and left, like a prince among his people. The whisperings that followed him seemed to him murmurs of praise and he beamed cheerfully at the thought of the imminent consternation of the Warden and the Dean.
In this way he reached the Quai de la Brille. A few yards away a group of excited children, roaring with laughter, were throwing stones into the water, while some sailors, lounging in the sun and smoking, seemed interested in the game. Heraclius approached and then suddenly drew back as though he had received a heavy blow in the chest. Ten yards from the bank, sinking and coming up again by turns, a kitten was drowning. The poor little animal was making desperate efforts to regain the bank, but each time she showed her head above water a stone thrown by one of the urchins, who were enjoying her agony, made her go under again. The wicked rascals vied with each other and urged each other on, and when a well-aimed shot hit the wretched animal there were shouts of laughter and cries of joy. Suddenly a glancing pebble hit the kitten on the forehead and a trickle of blood appeared on her white fur. The torturers burst into shouts of joy and applause, which, however, turned suddenly into a terrible panic. Livid, trembling with rage, upsetting all before him and striking out with his fists and feet, the Doctor hurled himself among the brats like a wolf into a flock of sheep. Their terror was so great and their flight so rapid that one of them, distracted with fear, threw himself into the river and disappeared. Heraclius quickly unbuttoned his coat, kicked off his shoes and jumped into the water. He was seen to swim vigorously for a moment or two, catch hold of the kitten just as she was sinking, and regain the bank. Then he seated himself on a stone and having dried and kissed the little being whom he had snatched from death, he folded her lovingly in his arms like a baby and without troubling about
