Sylva

Poor Na

Perhaps there mingled in her inclination toward me something else, which I should have been hard put to define: a certain sensitivity to my mood, a more sedulous attention to my words and deeds, and that primitive jealousy when I was talking to Dorothy or even to Na

Her progress in practical life was of the same type: pertaining to the training of an animal rather than to education. She could wash and dress herself (as long as there were no buttons or shoelaces—she never bothered about them), she ate at table, but with her fingers, and licked her plate clean of the last trace of gravy. She later learned to clean it with a piece of bread instead, a habit she never lost.

As the days passed, I saw Dr. Sullivan increase the rhythm of his visits. Had he finally accepted in his own mind that Sylva was indeed a former fox? He had never said anything to the contrary and, at all events, it was evident that he was begi

“It is a unique experiment!” he said, shaking his foamy hair. “Actually this creature takes us back five hundred thousand years: when the very first men, with their brains fully constituted but still, like this one, void of experience and of knowledge, had sprung brand-new from animality! What is going to happen to this brain is of fantastic interest—supposing, of course, that anything does happen,” he added with cautious reserve. But he seemed to have shed, for some time already, part of his pessimism.

I observed that the experiment would be completely falsified by the mere fact that we, who surrounded my little fox, were equipped with twentieth-century brains.

He shook his head. “No, no, the experiment will be accelerated no doubt—happily for us. If we had to wait for two or three hundred thousand years… but it won’t be falsified. Even supposing the impossible—that her intelligence might some day catch up with ours—it will necessarily have to pass through all the various stages first. For instance, does Sylva know something that seems quite simple to us: that she exists? Certainly not: no more than a fox, a horse, or a monkey does, no more than the first men could have known it, steeped as they were in their dark instincts. Now that is the very first and absolutely indispensable stage. In what form did it present itself, how was it passed, what wouldn’t we give to be present at this first awakening of consciousness in our earliest forefathers! And here, perhaps, with your Sylva, it may happen under our very eyes! She will need our help, of course. We must push her toward it with all our might. I still do not know how. Let me think it over.”

Was I myself very set on the success of these “experiments”? To see Sylva actually pass these “stages”? On the one hand, of course, I ardently wished it; on the other I was dimly afraid of it. However, when Herbert Sullivan talked to me of mirrors, I did not dream of opposing his projects. Actually, I was a little mortified to see Sylva still behaving, in front of mirrors, just as a fox would have done: she never looked at herself in them.

“Fine! Fine!” said Dr. Sullivan. “So we’re really starting from scratch. The thing to do is to produce a shock,” he explained, and we set out on a search for a large-sized looking glass.

We wandered together through the i

After an hour’s vain waiting during which Sylva passed to and fro before the glass some twenty times without even noticing it, the doctor asked Na

It was a rather smarting defeat for the doctor, but as a scientist he did not take it overmuch to heart. “Too soon,” he said. “Leave the mirror where it is. There’ll come a day, no doubt, when by dint of meeting her likeness, she’ll end up by recognizing herself. I only regret one thing, and that is that I won’t be present… You’ll tell me.”

But poor Na

I remembered that Dorothy had smiled mysteriously at this failure. But she had not given her own opinion. As for myself, I was more inclined to share Na

As for the mirror, we did indeed leave it where it was. I do not know if the doctor really clung to the hope that it might produce a revelation some day, or if he simply persisted in order not to cry off at once. He questioned me about it from time to time. Then, after always getting the same reply, he too seemed to lose hope. And with his hopes fading, he showed himself less often, letting his daughter drive over on her own. She often did. I was delighted with these newly found bonds of friendship and grateful to my little vixen who had so charmingly forged them without knowing it.