218 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
Why so however, if the noble animal symbolizes the inventor? 
For a very simple reason ; because all the French revolutions in 
which the stag has suffered, have been juggled away by the aristo- 
cracy of capital, to the great detriment of the laborers ; and that 
for the man of genius, for Moliere, Riquet, Perrault, Monge, Laplace, 
the friendship of Louis XIV., of Colbert, or of Napoleon, is worth 
much more than the protection of charters or constitutions. The great 
king, the absolute sovereign, can love progress but moderately ; 
but from pride, from love of glory, he considers himself bound to 
encourage science and the fine arts. He endows the poet and the 
artist with rich pensions, he reserves them for the intellectual plea- 
sures of his court. The noblest and most generous Mecoenas of 
the epoch is the Czar Nicholas ; and the judicious autocrat does 
not confine himself to enrich and honor talent by his munificence. 
At the same time that he rewards useful labor he ]3roscribes para- 
sitical industry — he condemns tlie trafficking Jew to work ! 
The citizen government, whether monarchy or republic, has its 
artistic instincts less developed than the absolute monarchy of Ha- 
roun A1 Raschid, Soliman, Louis XIY., or Nicholas. 
Thus under the ancient monarchy, the deer knew not indigence ; 
the munificence of the civil list piled for him heaps of salt— salt, 
emblem of purity and lustre, which defends the skin of the 
ruminants against the bite of the parasite tic. Now ask the in- 
tendant of the civil list, what the salt for the deer costs in the 
crown forests. 
Ask the Minister of the Intei ior and of the fine arts, what La- 
martine, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand, Eugene De la Croix, and 
George Sand cost him annually : Nothing.. 
The Stag is not less ingenious nor less fertile in resources than 
the hare, and their expedients are nearly the same. These two 
unfortunates having been created for martyrdom, a delicate ear and 
nose have been combined with their fleetness, and with the faculty 
of combining plans of defensive strategy. 
Like the hare, the stag retraces his course along high roads, and 
if the hare, hard pushed, will nestle in the top of willow trees and 
in old lime-kilns, the history of the deer hunt abounds in drama- 
tic view halloos, whose scene has been the roofs of houses. The 
