ernment had arrested with his parent, for some cause unknown—which horrid little boy told me that he had "found" the sabots "in a train" on the way to La Ferté) shook myself into my fur coat, and banged as noisemakingly as I knew how over to One Eyed Dah-veed's paillasse, where Mexique joined us. "It is useless to sleep," said One Eyed Dah-veed in French and Spanish. "True," I agreed; "therefore, let's make all the noise we can."
Steadily the racket bulged in the darkness. Human cries, quips and profanity had now given place to wholly inspired imitations of various, not to say sundry, animals. Afrique exclaimed—with great pleasure I recognised his voice through the impenetrable gloom:
"Agahagahagahagahagah!"
—"perhaps," said I, "he means a machine gun; it sounds like either that or a monkey." The Wanderer crowed beautifully. Monsieur Auguste's bosom friend, le Cordonnier, uttered an astonishing:
"Meeee-ooooooOW!"
which provoked a tornado of laughter and some applause. Mooings, chirpings, cacklings—there was a superb hen—neighings, he-hawing, roarings, bleatings, growlings, quackings, peepings, screamings, bellowings, and—something else, of course—set The Enormous Room suddenly and entirely alive. Never have I imagined such a menagerie as had magically instated itself within the erstwhile soggy and dismal four walls of our chamber. Even such staid characters as Count Bragard set up a little bawling. Monsieur Pet-airs uttered a tiny aged crowing to my immense astonishment and delight. The dying, the sick, the ancient, the mutilated, made their contributions to the common pandemonium. And then, from the lower left darkness, sprouted one of the very finest noises which ever fell on human ears—the noise of a little dog with floppy ears who was tearing after something on very short legs and carrying his very fuzzy tail straight up in the air as he tore; a little dog who was busier than he was wise, louder than he was big; a red-tongued, foolish breathless, intent little dog
