winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in

   their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin

     and strictly practical appendages

       were there, the small cats and the parrakeet—

         trivial and humdrum on examination, destroying

       bark and portions of the food it could not eat.

  I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent

   than it is dim. It is difficult to recall the ornament,

     speech, and precise manner of what one might

       call the minor acquaintances twenty

         years back; but I shall never forget—that Gilgamesh among

       the hairy carnivora—that cat with the

   wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,

   astringently remarking: “They have imposed on us with their pale,

     half fledged protestations, trembling about

       in inarticulate frenzy, saying

         it is not for all of us to understand art, finding it

       all so difficult, examining the thing

   as if it were something inconceivably arcanic, as

   symmetrically frigid as something carved out of chrysopras

     or marble—strict with tension, malignant

       in its power over us and deeper

         than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp,

       rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.”