declared: "I could as well have drawn it with a compass, I swear. The buttons are bursting from his waistcoat. It is positively unsafe." But still Rubén sat, eating moodily in solitude, and weeping over Isabel after his third bottle of sweet wine at night. His friends talked it over, concluded that the affair was growing desperate; it was high time some one should tell him the true cause of his pain. But every one wished the other would be the one chosen. And it came out there was not a person in the group, possibly not one in all Mexico, indelicate enough to do such a thing. They decided to shift the responsibility upon a physician from the faculty of the university. In the mind of such a one would be combined a sufficiently refined sentiment with the highest degree of technical knowledge. This was the diplomatic, the discreet, the fastidious thing to do. It was done. The doctor found Rubén seated before his easel, facing the half-finished nineteenth figure of Isabel. He was weeping, and between sobs he ate spoonfuls of soft Toluca cheese, with spiced mangos. He hung in all directions over his painting-stool, like a mound of kneaded dough. He told the doctor first about Isabel. "I do assure you faithfully, my friend, not even I could capture in paint the line of beauty in her thigh and instep. And, besides, she was an angel for kindness." Later he said the pain in his heart would be the death of him. The doctor was profoundly touched. For a great while he sat offering consolation without courage to prescribe material cures for a man of such delicately adjusted susceptibilities. "I have only crass and vulgar remedies," with a graceful gesture he seemed to offer them between thumb and forefinger,-"but they are all the world of flesh may contribute toward the healing of the wounded spirit." He named them one at a time. They made a neat, but not impressive, row: a diet, fresh air, long walks, frequent violent exercise, preferably on the cross-bar, ice showers, almost no wine. Rubén seemed not to hear him. His sustained, oblivious murmur flowed warmly through the doctor's solemnly rounded periods: "The pains are most unendurable at night, when I lie in my lonely bed and gaze at the empty heavens through my narrow window, and I think to myself, 'Soon my grave shall be narrower than that window, and darker than that firmament,' and my heart gives a writhe. Ah, Isabelita, my executioner!" The doctor tiptoed out respectfully, and left him sitting there eating cheese and gazing with wet eyes at the nineteenth figure of Isabel. The friends grew hopelessly bored and left him more and more alone. No one saw him for some weeks except the proprietor of a small café called "The Little Monkeys" where Rubén was accustomed to dine with Isabel and where he now went alone for food. Here one night quite suddenly Rubén clasped his heart with violence, rose from his chair, and upset the dish of tamales and pepper gravy he had been eating. The proprietor ran to him. Rubén said something in a hurried whisper, made rather an impressive gesture over his head with one arm, and, to say it as gently as possible, died. His friends hastened the next day to see the proprietor, who gave them a solidly dramatic version of the lamentable episode. Ramón was even then gathering material for an intimate biography of his country's most eminent painter, to be illustrated with large numbers of his own character portraits. Already the dedication was composed to his "Friend and Master, Inspired and Incomparable Genius of Art on the American Continent." "But what did he say to you," insisted Ramón, "at the final stupendous moment? It is most important. The last words of a great artist, they should be very eloquent. Repeat them precisely, my dear fellow! It will add splendor to the biography, nay, to the very history of art itself, if they are eloquent." The proprietor nodded his head with the air of a man who understands everything. "I know, I know. Well, maybe you Well, maybe you will not believe me when I tell you that his very last words were a truly sublime message to you, his good and faithful friends, and to the world. He said, gentlemen: 'Tell them I am a martyr to love. I perish in a cause worthy the sacrifice. I die of a broken heart!' and then he said, 'Isabelita, my executioner!' That was all, gentlemen," ended the proprietor, simply and reverently. He bowed his head. They all bowed their heads. "That was truly magnificent," said Ramón, after the correct interval of silent mourning. "I thank you. It is a superb epitaph. I am most gratified." "He was also supremely fond of my tamales and pepper gravy," added the proprietor in a modest tone. "They were his final indulgence." "That shall be mentioned in its place, never fear, my good friend," cried Ramón, his voice crumbling with generous emotion, "with the name of your café, even. It shall be a shrine for artists when this story is known. Trust me faithfully to preserve for the future every smallest detail in the life and character of this great genius. Each episode has its own sacred, its precious and peculiar interest. Yes, truly, I shall mention the tamales." In the Animals' Paradise BY PRINCE VILHELM OF SWEDEN NDER a scorching sun Ohlsson, at the foot of the mountains, the U Arrhenius, and I drew toward the wealth culminated. plains of the Ruindi River. It is said that these plains south of Lake Edward are the richest in game in the world. It was thus with great hopes that we looked forward to the future new specimens for our collections, meat for the pot, and animals always before the camera. In the mountains there had been difficulties both with regard to food and the camera. There the ground had been inhumanly difficult, and more suitable for monkeys and beasts with sucker-feet than for men. Now everything was going to be different scorched, open spaces, with short, burned-up grass, small well filled ravines, and pleasantly dense acacia groves. In a word, a dry park-like landscape. Our expectations were to be amply fulfilled. After crossing the Rutshuru River, we struck our tents the first night at Kayumba, where the nightly lion music, which was to echo unceasingly in our sleep for a month to come, started in full force. But it was only the next afternoon, when we had passed the hot springs of Maj-na-motos, in which you can almost boil eggs in a crevice in the mountain, and had reached the plains on each side of the Ruindi River, that the game began to appear in greater numbers. At Kanyamaranga, another day's march toward the west, and just Scorched brown and silent, the plains lay in the intense sunlight. Not a man or a hut was seen. The acacias stretched their thirsty arms toward a glowing sky. The green branched candles of the euphorbia shone juicy and poisonous, completely untouched by the drought. The plant seems full of life, but the grass all about was often sooty black from some prairie fire, which stopped at the roots of the euphorbia and had never dared to lick its resisting trunks. Now and then we caught a glimpse of smaller woods or sparse copses of bushes and thorny plants, forming, as it were, islands in a big dry sea. In long, even curves the ground rose and fell, just as if enormous Atlantic ground-swells had suddenly stiffened in their motion. Deep ravines cut through the landscape in all directions, forming stair-like ledges amidst all the flatness. But otherwise it was flat, flat, flat. Here in this old lake bottom, where the waves of Lake Edward and Lake Kiwu once met in sisterly union, lay the animals' paradise. Water they found in the Ruindi and in the occasional pools, pastures in the dry coarse grass that seems unsuitable for fodder, but is, all the same, the favorite food of all the hungry mouths. Antelopes are in the majority, alone, in pairs, in flocks, in herds of hundreds of heads. You can positively not take a step without seeing new heads popping up. But the number of species is not great. Here in one place you see stately water-bucks of massive muscular build and with long horn-like antlers. Blackgray and shaggy, they prefer the proximity of protective woods. In another a herd of a few hundred curious topi stare at the intruder. In order to see better, they approach slowly, with shining brown bodies and sloping backs and silly-looking heads. But suddenly the strange smell of the twolegged man-animal reaches their nostrils, and the whole flock turns round as quick as lightning. Slender kobs, with horns gracefully shaped like a lyre, look drowsy in the midday heat. Now and then a couple of bucks stand up to fight, so that their horns crack. Quick-footed reed-bucks leap high in the air and produce a strange whistling noise when they are frightened. In single file the terrifying and ugly warthogs run, with their curly tails raised stiffly in the air, if they are not nosing for food under some bush, and in the evening the shy bush-buck peeps out of his hiding-place. His horns twist spirally from the forehead, and the light streaks in his coat of hair give the impression that the animal is in harness. Baboons and monkeys chat away the hours in the thickets along the river. Storks, vultures, eagles, and other birds of prey make dizzy curves in the air, which vibrates with the heat. In the forests the buffaloes lead their shy life. Originally an animal of the open plains, they have slowly withdrawn in splendid isolation, since they have observed that man has begun mercilessly to pursue them; but in the evenings and mornings they come out to graze. Then you can see their dark bodies like gigantic silhouettes against the surrounding plains. Even the elephants pay a call now and then, but keep mostly up on the slopes of the Rand mountains. Finally the lions and leopards live in the ravines in close proximity to those marauders of the night, hyenas and jackals. They are responsible for the movement in the plains after sunset, and they force the kobs and the topi always to keep a sharp lookout, so that they dare not sleep with more than one eye closed. Otherwise, woe to them! In the midst of the open plains the antelopes graze, if they have not sought protection from the midday heat below some tree. The grass is scarcely a foot high, but, all the same, one can come quite close up to them if the wind is favorable. A distance of from thirty to forty yards is not unusual at the first meeting, because the animals live in happy ignorance of man's cruelty and desire to kill. After the first shot they often stand still and stare uncomprehendingly at their fallen comrade. Only after a time does it dawn on them that the noise from the gun spells danger, and then their shyness is boundless. They gallop away at the first suspicious breath of wind, and are afterward very difficult to approach. Two hundred yards or a little more is on such occasions a good range. $2 As soon as our collectors-that is, the National Museum—had acquired their desired specimens, it was only unwillingly that we raised a gun to the shoulder. Why disturb the idyl? Why spread death and destruction in this animals' paradise? It was vastly more amusing to follow their lithe movements and observe their daily habits, or to lie hidden by a water-hole and witness unseen how they quenched their thirst and how the bucks fought for the best place. It was only the necessity of obtaining food for ourselves and a handful of blacks in the camp that made us even hesitatingly raise the finger to the trigger; or else the need for fresh carrion in order to keep the lions in order. Otherwise, why not leave the grazing herds in peace? It seemed almost criminal to disturb the calm of the paradise. § 3 For five weeks the expedition lay on the plains south of Lake Edward, sometimes down by the lake, sometimes in the middle of the savanna or just under the shadow of the mountains. West of Ruindi, east of Rutshuru, and of course between the two rivers, it was not difficult to obtain the necessary specimens for our collections. That was done in a few days, and then we occupied ourselves chiefly with filming the game and also with lion-shooting, because this district was overrun by those beasts of prey. To film this fearless animal world may seem to the uninitiated very simple, but that is in no wise the case. For if you go up to the animals on the open plain, they certainly stand still for a moment, but always start off long before the camera has been put up. It is therefore important to find a suitable place, preferably near a water-hole, and to build there a small, well concealed grass hut from the wall of which only the lens protrudes. Then you must wait for hours, days, even weeks, perhaps. Sometimes the light is unsuitable, sometimes the roll of film runs out just at the critical moment when a careless noise in the camera is enough to frighten away every living thing within a radius of a mile. Some days the game is shyer than on others. And if you have got a series of good pictures of a kob, for example, but lie in wait for a reed-buck, it often happens that just as these shyer animals come to drink, an old kob will stand a few yards from the lens and hide what you want to catch. And if you then get tired of it and gently ask him to get away, he certainly willingly does so, but takes with him at the same time all the suspicious reed-bucks. He who wants to film must first of all practise the difficult art of being patient. It would take too long and also be too monotonous to let the reader accompany us on all our excursions over the plains. the plains. One day was, on the whole, very much like another. Only the game varied. And so did the situations. The camp became an unimportant detail in which one only occasionally set foot. During the light hours of the day we shot food, built a boma, or made blood tracks. And when evening came we crept into our primitive little hut, made of twigs, listened to the sounds of the night, waited for lions, and stared in the intervals up at the twinkling stars in the sky. What, then, shall I talk about? How the first lion fell one morning at sunrise after having bravely defended his life? How fifteen of them came after carrion at nine o'clock one evening, and how, in order to get peace at last, we shot eight before the last one in pure fright jumped at the barrel of my rifle? How an old wounded |