The man who was quite regardless of the Eden which he thus possessed had neither wife nor children, but was attached to a large ape which he kept.  A graceful turret of wood, supported by a sculptured column, served as a dwelling place for this vicious animal, who being kept chained and rarely petted by his eccentric master, oftener at Paris than in his country home, had gained a very bad reputation.  I recollect seeing him once in the presence of certain ladies show almost as much insolence as if he had been a man.  His master was obliged to kill him, so mischievous did he gradually become.

One morning while I was sitting under a beautiful tulip tree in flower, occupied in doing nothing but inhaling the lovely perfumes which the tall poplars kept confined within the brilliant enclosure, enjoying the silence of the groves, listening to the murmuring waters and the rustling leaves, admiring the blue gaps outlined above my head by clouds of pearly sheen and gold, wandering fancy free in dreams of my future, I heard some lout or other, who had arrived the day before from Paris, playing on a violin with the violence of a man who has nothing else to do.  I would not wish for my worst enemy to hear anything so utterly in discord with the sublime harmony of nature.  If the distant notes of Roland’s Horn had only filled the air with life, perhaps—­but a noisy fiddler like this, who undertakes to bring to you the expression of human ideas and the phraseology of music!  This Amphion, who was walking up and down the dining-room, finished by taking a seat on the window-sill, exactly in front of the monkey.  Perhaps he was looking for an audience.  Suddenly I saw the animal quietly descend from his little dungeon, stand upon his hind feet, bow his head forward like a swimmer and fold his arms over his bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero.  The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop.  The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin.  I don’t know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but at the present moment, when I laugh much less than I did in those careless days, I never think of that monkey without a smile; the semi-man began by grasping the instrument with his fist and by sniffing at it as if he were tasting the flavor of an apple.  The snort from his nostrils probably produced a dull harmonious sound in the sonorous wood and then the orang-outang shook his head, turned over the violin, turned it back again, raised it up in the air, lowered it, held it straight out, shook it, put it to his ear, set it down, and picked it up again with a rapidity of movement peculiar to these agile creatures.  He seemed to question the dumb wood with faltering sagacity and in his gestures there