“Possible?” queried mein herr. “Perhaps his load was rather--but yet, you can hardly overload a donkey. Why, in Rome they are perfect moving heaps of fagots, hay, fruit, old clothes, mats, brooms, and brushes, and everything, in fact, that is salable and movable, with a dirty, swarthy peasant striding beside him as driver, or, it may be, a boy; but, no, I should say they are _always_ driven by a mob of boys. I hold that the most gregarious of all animals is the human biped in its youth; and if I were called upon for a centre-piece, with most power to collect around it these juvenile swarms of the genus _homo_, I should name a Roman donkey. Before him, behind him, a body-guard on each side, all sizes, in all sorts of garments, or, rather, in all degrees of nudity, shouting, yelling, laughing, talking, and each one using all his powers to increase the speed of the poor little beast--there you have a Roman donkey! I have been told of a scene in Rome. A little ass whose panniers were two good-sized baskets of eggs; it was about Easter time, when eggs are valuable. To hasten him, his driver, a tall, ragged peasant, struck him smartly, which offended him. He stood still a moment, then deliberately laid himself down, and rolled over. The peals of laughter which greeted the donkey as he arose, daubed and dripping with the yellow semi-liquid, the bewailings of his owner, all together were worth seeing. In no place in Europe are they as poorly fed and as much abused as by the lower classes in Paris; truly they are miserable-looking wretches there, bony, sulky, dirty. I have often wished to apply to the back of the ragged, screaming boy-driver the stick with which he was cudgelling his poor donkey. Monsieur Chateaubriand says he would gladly be the advocate of certain creatures, works of God, despised by men, and ‘en première ligne,’ says he, ‘figuereraient l’âne et le chat.’ “The heavy-laden ass is a verity in ancient lore; even its name is used to express hardship and endurance; as from the Greek word ὄνος, an ass, is supposed to be derived the Latin _onus_, signifying a _burden_.” Mein herr made a pause, he was evidently lapsing into the delusion that he was in his _Collegienhaus_, lecturing on donkeys. The gentle frau recalled his wandering wits by observing, in a low, sad voice: “Oh! he shook so many things off; all lost; he shook half his load off in the creek!” “Indeed!” exclaimed the herr, “is it possible! that was not to be expected of him. Many classical writers mention _loading_ the ass, but I cannot recall a single instance where he _unloaded_ himself in a creek! “Horace, it is true, refers to what might be a little sulkiness under a heavy load, when he represents himself as a sort of discontented donkey under the infliction of some of his troublesome friends: ‘Demitto auriculas ut iniquæ mentis asellus Quum gravius dorso, subiit onus.’[29]