One of the chameleons had now reached the top of the string and the centre of the rosette. Putting out a pitiful little paw, he tried the ceiling to see if it were possible to cling to it, and in that way to effect an escape. In making this experiment, for the hundredth time perhaps, he squinted with his eyes in the most desperate and touching way, as if invoking aid from heaven and earth; then, seeing no hope of egress on that side, he slowly began to descend the cord again, with a sad, resigned, and piteous look,—emblem of useless labor, a Sisyphus of wasted energies. Half-way down the two creatures met, exchanged glances meant to be friendly, perhaps, but horrible from their squints, and for a moment or two formed a group which was like a hideous bunch on the perpendicular line of the string. After a few ludicrous contortions the group disentangled, each chameleon continuing its journey, the one which was coming down reaching the end of the cord, stretching out a hind leg, sounding the air cautiously and finding no place of support, drawing it in again with a discouraged movement whose heart-breaking and absurd melancholy baffles all description. By one of those associations of ideas which cannot be accounted for, but which the mind conceives without understanding why, the chameleons reminded me of one of Goya’s gloomiest etchings, in which are represented spectres, who, with feeble and shadowy arms, are trying to lift heavy stones which roll back upon and crush them,—an unequal conflict of weakness with destiny. In order to deliver these poor animals from their sufferings we bought for them a rough sort of cage. It was of good size, and, once installed therein, they were able to dispense with those acrobatic exercises which seemed to make them so miserable. As to the question of food, with all respect for Southern frugality, this living on air by its very name seems insufficient. A Spanish lover may, perhaps, be able to breakfast on a glass of water, dine on a cigarette, and sup on a tune from his mandolin; but the tastes of chameleons are less refined, and they crave and devour flies, which they catch, in the oddest manner, by darting out from the throat a sort of long lance covered with a viscous slime, which adheres to the wings of the insect, and, when drawn in again, carries him bodily along with it into the gullet.