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Updated: May 31, 2025
And if we fling off an old friend, and take to affecting a hatred of him which we do not feel, we have scarcely gained by the exchange, even though originally our friendship may have been misplaced. Capability no one will deny to Reineke. That is the very differentia of him. An 'animal capable' would be his sufficient definition.
I tried to catch him, but that was not to be, and young Reineke soon found a way home. Nevertheless, the joy was mine, never to be forgotten, of having seen a real wild beast so near. Even on dark and stormy days the park has its own strange charm as one walks up the gloomy avenue on the soft fir-needles glistening with rain.
The king of the beasts forgives Reineke on account of the substantial services which at various times he has rendered. His counsel was always the wisest, his hand the promptest in cases of difficulty; and all that dexterity, and politeness, and courtesy, and exquisite culture had not been learnt without an effort, or without conquering many undesirable tendencies in himself.
It had come to this; as in the exuberance of our pleasure with some dear child, no ordinary epithet will sometimes reach to express the vehemence of our affection, and borrowing language out of the opposites, we call him little rogue or little villain, so here, reversing the terms of the analogy, we bestow the fulness of our regard on Reineke because of that transcendently successful roguery.
'I hope I am afraid of nothing, Trim, said my uncle Toby, 'except doing a wrong thing. With Reineke there was no 'except. His digestive powers shrank from no action, good or bad, which would serve his turn. Yet it required no slight measure of courage to treat his fellow-creatures with the steady disrespect with which Reineke treats them.
The bullets flew over our heads like finches, and did us no harm, but we had to be on our guard against the sharpshooters, who occasionally fired close to us. The Pretoria men, who were to have relieved us in the trench, took a great part in that battle. Reineke, Yeppe, Malherbe, De Villiers, and Olivier were killed. Ihrige was severely wounded.
Was the sole difference between them, that the vates sacer who had sung the exploits of Reineke loved the wicked rascal, and entangled us in loving him? It was a question to be asked. And yet we had faith enough in the straight-forwardness of our own sympathies to feel sure that it must admit of some sort of answer.
While he lives, he lives for himself; but if he comes to dying, he can die like his betters; and his wit is not of that effervescent sort which will fly away at the sight of death and leave him panic-stricken. It is true there is a meaning to that word courage, which was perhaps not to be found in the dictionary in which Reineke studied.
We may well feel gratitude that a Reineke was provided to be the scourge of such monsters as these; and we have a thorough pure, exuberant satisfaction in seeing the intellect in that little weak body triumph over them and trample them down.
A great deal of humor may coexist with a great deal of barbarism, as we see in the Middle Ages; but the strongest flavor of the humor in such cases will come, not from sympathy, but more probably from triumphant egoism or intolerance; at best it will be the love of the ludicrous exhibiting itself in illustrations of successful cunning and of the lex talionis as in Reineke Fuchs, or shaking off in a holiday mood the yoke of a too exacting faith, as in the old Mysteries.
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