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Updated: June 18, 2025
Vitalis had not mentioned what she had proposed to him in her letter, so I said nothing of her plan. "Is this lady expecting me?" he asked, as we entered the hotel. "Yes, I'll take you up to her apartment," I said. "There's no occasion for that," he replied; "I'll go up alone; you wait here for me with Pretty-Heart and the dogs."
"Well, bring him on yourself." She signed to a man who stood near the rail. He came forward and threw a plank across to the bank. With my harp on my shoulder and Pretty-Heart in my arms I stepped up the plank. "The monkey! the monkey!" cried the little boy, whom the lady addressed as Arthur. I went up to him and, while he stroked and petted Pretty-Heart, I watched him. He was strapped to a board.
Several times Vitalis passed his hand under the coverlet to feel Pretty-Heart, but the poor little monkey did not get warmer, and when I bent over him I could hear him shivering and shaking. The blood in his veins was frozen. "We must get to a village or Pretty-Heart will die," said Vitalis. "Let us start at once." His wrappings were well heated and the little creature was rolled in them.
Milligan received a reply to the letter she had sent Vitalis. He said that he would be pleased to come and see her, and that he would arrive the following Saturday, by the two o'clock train. I asked permission to go to the station with the dogs and Pretty-Heart to meet him. In the morning the dogs were restless as though they knew that something was going to happen. Pretty-Heart was indifferent.
My master was sleeping calmly; the dogs and Pretty-Heart also slept, and the flames leaped from the fire and swirled upward to the roof, throwing out bright sparks. The spluttering flame was the only sound that broke the silence of the night. For a long time I watched the sparks, then little by little I began to get drowsy, without my being aware.
Holding his head high and with chest thrown out, he kept time with his arms and feet while gayly playing his fife. Behind him came Capi, carrying Pretty-Heart on his back, wearing the uniform of an English general, a red coat and trousers trimmed with gold braid and helmet topped with a plume. Zerbino and Dulcie came next, at a respectful distance. I brought up the rear.
During the first part of my discourse he had listened to me with the greatest interest, but before I had said twenty words, he had sprung up into a tree, the branches of which hung over our heads, and was now swinging himself from branch to branch. If Capi had insulted me in like manner, my pride would certainly have been hurt; but I was never astonished at anything Pretty-Heart might do.
We were all so faint and sick, yet if I played something lively and made the two poor dogs dance with Pretty-Heart the time might pass quicker. I took my instrument, which I had placed up against a tree and, turning my back to the canal I put my animals in position and began to play a dance. At first neither the dogs nor the monkey seemed disposed to dance. All they wanted was food.
At this word, which the animals well knew, the dogs began to bark and Pretty-Heart rubbed his stomach vigorously. "Oh, Mamma!" cried Arthur. The lady said a few words in a strange language to a woman, whose head I could see through a half open door. Almost immediately the woman appeared with some food. "Sit down, my child," said the lady. I did so at once.
Now this successor is not to be a dog, it is to be a boy, a country boy named Remi." "Oh...." "You have just come from the country to take a position with Mr. Pretty-Heart." "Monkeys don't have servants." "In plays they have. Well, you've come straight from your village and your new master thinks that you're a fool." "Oh, I don't like that!" "What does that matter if it makes the people laugh?
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