open, teeth showing, all its limbs stretched out and unwearying in their vigorous elasticity, the aristocratic beast, the beast of prey, ardent in love and the chase, intoxicated with their double intoxication, its eyes fixed, was already enjoying a foretaste of its capture with a little end of its tongue which hung and seemed to sharpen the teeth with a ferocious laugh.  When you only looked at the hound you said to yourself, “He has got him!” But the sight of the fox reassured you immediately.  Beneath the velvet of his lustrous coat, cat-like almost lying along the ground, covering it rapidly without effort, you felt him to be a veritable fairy; and his delicate head with its pointed ears, which as he ran he turned towards the hound, had an expression of ironical security which clearly marked the gift received from the gods.

While an Inspector of Fine Arts, who had rushed up in all haste, with his official dress in disorder, and a head bald right down to his back, explained to Mohammed the apologue of “The Dog and the Fox,” related in the descriptive catalogue with these words inscribed beneath, “Now it happened that they met,” and the indication, “The property of the Duc de Mora,” the fat Hemerlingue, perspiring and puffing by his Highness’s side, had great difficulty to convince him that this masterly piece of sculpture was the work of the beautiful young lady whom they had encountered the previous evening riding in the Bois.  How could a woman, with her feeble hands, thus mould the hard bronze, and give to it the very appearance of the living body?  Of all the marvels of Paris, this was the one which caused the Bey the most astonishment.  He inquired consequently from the functionary if there was nothing else to see by the same artist.

“Yes, indeed, monseigneur, another masterpiece.  If your Highness will deign to step this way I will conduct you to it.”

The Bey commenced to move on again with his suite.  They were all admirable types, with chiselled features and pure lines, warm pallors of complexion of which even the reflections were absorbed by the whiteness of their haiks.  Magnificently draped, they contrasted with the busts ranged on either side of the aisle they were following, which, perched on their high columns, looking slender in the open air, exiled from their own home, from the surroundings in which doubtless they would have recalled severe labours, a tender affection, a busy and courageous existence, had the sad aspect of people gone astray in their path, and very regretful to find themselves in their present situation.  Excepting two or three female heads, with opulent shoulders framed in petrified lace, and hair rendered in marble with that softness of touch which gives it the lightness of a powdered wig, excepting, too, a few profiles of children with their simple lines, in which the polish of the stone seems to resemble the moistness of the living flesh, all the rest were only wrinkles, crow’s-feet, shrivelled features and grimaces, our excesses in work and in movement, our nervousness and our feverishness, opposing themselves to that art of repose and of beautiful serenity.