We go together through the streets and along the bustling quays
of Elberfeld to the stable, situated at a few hundred steps from
the shop. The horses are taking the air outside the doors of
their boxes, in the yard shaded by a lime-tree. There are four of
them: Mohammed, the most intelligent, the most gifted of them
all, the great mathematician of the party; his double, Zarif, a
little less advanced, less tractable, craftier, but at the same
time more fanciful, more spontaneous and capable of occasional
disconcerting sallies; next, Hanschen, a little Shetland pony,
hardly bigger than a Newfoundland dog, the street-urchin of the
band, always quivering with excitement, roguish, flighty,
uncertain and passionate, but ready in a moment to work you out
the most difficult addition and multiplication sums with a
furious scrape of the hoof; and lastly the latest arrival, the
plump and placid Berto, an imposing black stallion, quite blind
and lacking the sense of smell. He has been only a few months at
school and is still, so to speak, in the preparatory class, but
already does--a little more clumsily, but more good humouredly
and conscientiously--small addition and subtraction sums quite as
well as many a child of the same age.
In a corner, Kama, a young elephant two or three years old, about
the size of an outrageously "blown" donkey, rolls his mischievous
and almost knavish eye, under the shelter of his wide ears, each
resembling a great rhubarb-leaf, and with his stealthy,
insinuating trunk carefully picks up whatever he considers fit to
eat, that is to say, pretty well everything that lies about on
the stones.
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