Now kiss me and go on."
But Mohammed, after giving his master a hearty kiss, still seems
to be hesitating. Then Krall, to put him on the right track
observes that the first letter of my name is the same as the
first letter of his own. Mohammed strikes a K, evidently thinking
of his master's name. At last, Krall draws a big M on the
black-board, whereupon the horse, like one suddenly remembering a
word which he could not think of, raps out, one after the other
and without stopping, the letters M A Z R L K, which, stripped of
useless vowels, represent the curious corruption which my name
has undergone, since the morning, in a brain that is not a human
brain. He is told that this is not correct. He seems to agree,
gropes about a little and writes, M A R Z L E G K. Krall repeats
my name and asks which is the first letter to be altered. The
stallion marks an R.
"Good, but what letter will you put instead?"
Mohammed strikes an N.
"No, do be careful!"
He strikes a T.
"Very good, but in what place will the T come?"
"In the third," replies the horse; and the corrections continue
until my patronomic comes out of its strange adventure almost
unscathed.
And the spelling, the questioning, the sums, the problems are
resumed and follow upon one another, as wonderful, as bewildering
as before, but already a little dimmed by familiarity, like any
other prolonged miracle.
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