ried in
his bosom, even to the Convention, as a vent for the exuberant
sensibilities which overflowed his affectionate heart."

In a note the novelist remarks--

"This tenderness for some pet animal was by no means peculiar to
Couthon; it seems rather a common fashion with the gentle butchers of
the Revolution. M. George Duval informs us ('Souvenirs de la Terreur,'
iii. p. 183), that Chaumette had an aviary, to which he devoted his
harmless leisure; the murderous Fournier carried, on his shoulders, a
pretty little squirrel attached by a silver chain; Panis bestowed the
superfluity of his affections upon two gold pheasants; and Marat, who
would not abate one of the three hundred thousand heads he demanded,
_reared doves_! Apropos of the spaniel of Couthon, Duval gives us a
characteristic anecdote of Sergent, not one of the least relentless
agents of the massacre of September. A lady came to implore his
protection for one of her relations confined in the Abbaye. He scarcely
deigned to speak to her. As she retired in despair, she trod by accident
on the paw of his favourite spaniel. Sergent, turning round, enraged and
furious, exclaimed, '_Madam, have you no humanity?_'"

ARCTIC VOYAGER AND THE LEMMING.

Captain Back, on his arctic land expedition, when returning in September
1835, encountered a severe gale, which forced them to land their boat,
and as the water rose they had three times to haul it higher on the
bank. He introduces an affecting little incident: "So completely cold
and drenched was everything outside, that a poor little lemming, unable
to contend with the floods, which had driven it successively from all
its retreats, crept silently under the tent, and snuggled away in
precarious security within a few paces of a sleeping terrier.
Unconscious of its danger, it licked its fur coat, and darted its bright
eyes from object to object, as if pleased and surprised with its new
quarters; but soon the pricked ears of the awakened dog announced its
fate, and in another instant the poor little stranger was quivering in
his jaws!"[161]

* * * * *

Mr McDougall?][162] records several amusing anecdotes of the little
arctic lemming, named _Arctomys Spermophilus Parryi_, after the great
arctic voyager. He says,--"My own experience of those industrious little
warriors tended to prove that they possessed a strange combination of
sociality and combativeness. Industrious they most certain