154 



DEATH. 



potently armed. Not only is it provided with numerous keen-edged 

 teeth; not only are these teeth supplied with an ingenious reservoir 

 of poison which slays immediately; but their extreme fineness, which 

 renders them liable to fracture, is compensated by an advantage that 

 perhaps no other animal possesses; namely, a magazine of super- 

 numerary teeth, to supply at need the place of any accidentally 

 broken. Oh, what provision for killing ! What precautions that the 

 victim shall not escape ! What love for this horrible creature ! I 

 stood by it scandalized, if I may so speak, and with a sick soul. 

 Nature, the great mother, by whose side I had taken refuge, shocked 

 me with a maternity so cruelly impartial. 



Gloomily I walked away, bearing on my heart a darker shadow 

 than rested on the day itself, one of the sternest in winter. I had 

 come forth like a child; I returned home like an orphan, feeling the 

 notion of a Providence dying away within me. 



Our impressions are not less painful when we see in our galleries 

 the endless series of birds of prey, prowlers by day and night, 

 frightful masks of birds, phantoms which terrify the day itself. One 

 is powerfully affected by observing their cruel weapons; I do not 



refer to those terrible beaks which kill with a blow, but those talons, 

 those sharpened saws, those instruments of torture which fix the 

 shuddering prey, protract the last keen pangs and the agony of 

 suffering. 



