“This is the history of Nelly, whose memory is so dear to me that I will never have another pet.” _Vorbei! vorbei_--past and gone!--says Andersen in telling the fir-tree’s story. It is also _vorbei!_ with these pets--with Mouche and Dash and Kaiser, with Geist and Nelly and Flush. _IV._ “_THE UPPER TEN._” IV. “THE UPPER TEN.” Biography is so genial nowadays, and full of easy gossip, that we cannot help wondering a little at her former stiffness. Nothing is below her notice now, but the personalia of earlier times slip into her pages more by accident than design. This, no doubt, is the reason why she referred so seldom or so briefly to the pet animals of royalty. There was a divinity in monarchs then, and she treated them with such ceremonious respect that if we had only her account to look to, we should know but little of their real selves. Fortunately for us, letters have been written in every age, and countless private journals. From these sources come the anecdotes, the jests, the bits of gossip which recall the past more vividly, and make these old rulers seem life-like even yet. In this way many a simple, natural trait has been preserved to relieve the court background of formality and grandeur; many a little incident is told that proves our common blood. Kings and queens loved and hoped, or grieved and feared, even as ourselves who wear no crowns; and while the soft afterglow of years falls on royalty surrounded by its pets, we realize anew how one touch of nature can make the whole world kin. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, there might have been seen in India at the magnificent court of Jehangir, a favorite of unusual intelligence and size, whose story has come down to us in memoirs written by the Emperor himself. It reads like a page from the Arabian Nights. “Among my brother’s elephants,” he says, “was one of which I could not but express the highest admiration, and to which I gave the name of Indraging (the elephant of India). It was of a size I never beheld before--such as to get upon his back required a ladder of fourteen steps. It was of a disposition so gentle and tractable that under the most furious incitements, if an infant then unwarily threw itself in its way, it would lay hold of it with its trunk, and place it out of danger with the utmost tenderness and care. The animal was at the same time of such unparalleled speed and activity that the fleetest horse was not able to keep up with it; and such was its courage that it would attack with perfect readiness a hundred of the fiercest of its kind.