Instead of casting again at once, I stood watching the well-to-do citizens. One and another would rise to the surface, take in something I could not discern and settle back again; their existence seemed to be one of ease, as of mortals who had inherited or secured a competency, and were disposed to indolence. They moved with a dignity characteristic of high breeding. If one started in quest of a floating morsel his nearest neighbor courteously bowed him on, as it were, and with a graceful wave of his caudal said plainly: "Oblige me by taking precedence." Seeing one larger than his mates behind a small rock, I sent the coachman in his vicinity. Two started, but the smaller one halted--it was age and beauty before beauty alone. Age with its wisdom declined and settled back, beauty and inexperience came forward again and was lost to his crystal world.
Was this experience of the one who refused greater than could be encompassed by human subtlety? I was a little piqued, perhaps, at the indifference manifested. He might be a hotel clerk, a justice of the peace or some other dignitary metamorphosed.
I lighted my pipe, sat under the shade of the mountain beeches, smoked and reflected. An ousel came suddenly round the elbow of the river and alighted in the edge of the water a few yards away. He bobbed up and down a few times, said something to himself and took a running dive for a few feet along the margin of the bar, came out again, bobbed and spoke, as though he might be rehearsing for some water-wagtail entertainment, then took another dive. Presently a second one came round the same course, pleased himself and me with an exhibition precisely like that of his predecessor and finally disappeared.
I changed the coachman for a gray hackle with a peacock body and stepped into the edge of the pool. "The deformed transformed" had resumed his station behind his desk, and I put the temptation in his way. He could not resist it; he had his price and I had ascertained its maximum; a very trifle indeed, the veriest fraud as usual, compounded of tinsel and feathers, appealing first to the eye, then to the palate, arousing his dormant wicked propensities, tickling not the least of these--his avarice. I felt, I must confess, a symptom of contempt for him, as the sting of death touched his lips. I watched him struggle, feeling something approaching vicious exultation. I could not, however, but admire his efforts to rid himself of the consequences of his folly. Repentance, if he experienced it, came too late; the inexorable hand of the fate he had courted was closing upon him. He must have said to himself, at intervals, while he lay gasping: "If I were only safe out of this--I would never put on airs again--to excite the pride of the most humble of creatures." Resignation, however, was not one of his attributes; so long as hope of escape held a place in the remotest corner of his soul, he debated between genuine repentance and its shadow. He would yet make endeavors to release himself; if successful his old ways would be avoided, and humility might find a place in his mind, perhaps. I was not thoroughly convinced that he had been sufficiently overcome to warrant this favorable conclusion; I was still anxious to put my hand on him: he might forget his lesson. Being myself unsettled, I experienced no trouble in attributing all the hallucination to the individual at the other end of the line. One last, glorious endeavor, and he was free. I lifted my hat in token of his prowess, though I had not entirely pardoned his original conceit. When I saw him again he had safely ensconced himself between two rocks with his nose courting the opposite bank. He seemed very passive, with his tail at right angles with the gentle current. I watched him some time, but he did not move; he was prostrated, if ever fish was, in abject humiliation, crushed, absolutely, to earth.