278 
PASSTOlSrAL ZOOLOGY. 
The most careful education remains powerless against the in- 
cessant suggestions of a nature deceitful and treacherous, and too 
full of love for fowls. Dissimulation, this is the vice which tar- 
nishes all the qualities of the fox. Moreover, his physiognomy is 
not deceptive, and treachery is written in large and legible charac- 
ters in his downcast look, in his half-limping, oblique, and serpen- 
tine gait. 
Vulpes — abbreviation of volvipes — a tortuous gait — always dis- 
trust those small, stealthy glances which burn with dark fire, like 
the eye-beam of the viper, emblem of calumny. 
The good God is a powerful physiognomist ; He has willed that 
large eyes should be the mirror of an innocent and candid soul. 
The sheep, the ox, the gazelle, the stag, the hare, have received 
large eyes. You may read devotion and loyalty in the intelligent 
look of a dog. Woman, the noblest and most admirable creature 
that has issued from the hands of her Creator — woman, superior 
type of the angel, also raises toward heaven her large, soft, and 
dewy eyes, whose azure crystal reflects the candor of her soul ! 
If there are treacherous women, believe it well, it is the injus- 
tice of man that has thus denaturalized them. Woman havinor 
o 
been created to reign in this world, cannot in fact disobey the will 
of God by resigning herself to the shameful servitude to which 
man has reduced her. A slave — she is forced to have recourse 
to cunning to recover her sceptre. This is open war, and not 
treachery. 
The fox is the type of the swindler and ensnarer. He will con- 
ceal himself on the margin of a stream or pond peopled with wild 
ducks, only displaying his long brush, which he waves in the air 
to the admiration of these over curious and credulous birds, which 
swim up so close to examine it, that master fox, watching his 
chances, sometimes secures a good dinner. The civilized world is 
full of individuals of the fox type .... 
Young foxes easily accustom themselves to the persons and 
things of the house where they are raised. What they appear to 
value most highly among our institutions is the regularity of meals. 
I know none of Breguet’s chronometers capable of indicating 
the unitary hour of dinner with the same punctuality as the 
