A Passion in the Desert by Honore De Balzac; -- Translated by Ernest Dowson -- Can animals really feel passion or empathy? One soldier learned a hard lesson and lost a good friend in the process. **** "The whole show is dreadful," she cried coming out of the menagerie of M. Martin. She had just been looking at that daring speculator "working with his hyena,"--to speak in the style of the programme. "By what means," she continued, "can he have tamed these animals to such a point as to be certain of their affection for----"