PART II

‘Ah, ah!’ cried Dr. Thierry as he entered the studio next day, ‘so you’ve got a new inmate.’ And without paying any attention to Tom’s friendly growls or to Jacko’s engaging grimaces, he walked straight up to the jar which contained Mademoiselle Camargo—as she had already been named.[10]

Mademoiselle Camargo, unaware that Thierry was not only a learned doctor, but also a most intellectual and delightful person, fell to swimming round and round her jar as fast as she could go, which however did not prevent her being seized by one of her hind legs.

MADEMOISELLE CAMARGO BECOMES A BAROMETER

‘Dear me,’ said Thierry, as he turned the little creature about, ‘a specimen of the Rana temporaria. See, there are the two black spots near the eyes which give it the name. Now if you only had a few dozens of this species, I should advise you to have a fricassée made of their hind legs, to send for a couple of bottles of good claret, and to ask me to dinner. But as you only happen to have one, we will, with your leave, content ourselves with making a barometer.

‘Now,’ said Thierry, opening a drawer, ‘let us attend to the prisoner’s furniture.’ Saying which he took out two cartridges, a gimlet, a penknife, two paint-brushes, and four matches. Décamps watched him without in the least understanding the object of all these preparations, which the doctor was making with as much care as though for some surgical operation.

First he emptied the powder out of the cartridges into a tray and kept the bullets. Then he threw the brushes and ties to Jacko and kept the handles.

‘What the deuce are you about?’ cried Décamps, snatching his two best paint-brushes from Jacko. ‘Why you’re ruining my establishment!’

‘I’m making a ladder,’ gravely replied Thierry.

And true enough, having bored holes in the bullets, he fixed the brush handles into them so as to form the sides of the ladder, using the matches to make the rungs. Five minutes later the ladder was completed and placed in the jar, where the weight of the bullets kept it firmly down.

No sooner did Mademoiselle Camargo find herself the owner of this article of furniture than she prepared to test it by climbing up to the top rung.

‘We shall have rain,’ said Thierry.

‘You don’t say so,’ replied Décamps, ‘and there’s my brother who wanted to go out shooting again to-day.’

‘Mademoiselle Camargo does not advise his doing so,’ remarked the doctor.

‘How so?’

‘My dear friend, I have been providing you with an inexpensive but reliable barometer. Each time you see Mademoiselle Camargo climb to the top of her ladder it’s a sure sign of rain; when she remains at the bottom you may count on fine weather, and if she goes up half-way, don’t venture out without your umbrella; changeable, changeable.’

‘Dear me, dear me,’ said Décamps.

During the next six months Mademoiselle Camargo continued to foretell the weather with perfect and unerring regularity. But for painful reasons into which we need not inquire too closely, Mademoiselle’s useful career soon closed, and she left a blank in the ménagerie.