Our friend the dog

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

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OUR FRIEND
THE DOG

BY

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

AUTHOR OF " THE LIFE OF THE BEE," ETC.

TRANSLATED BY
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

ILLUSTRATED BY
CECIL ALDEN

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NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
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COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY
THE CENTURY Co.

COPYRIGHT, 190^, BY
DODD, MEAD & COMPAQ T

Published, October, 1918

OUR FRIEND THE DOG

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG
I

T HAVE lost, within these last
•*• few days, a little bull-dog.
He had just completed the sixth
month of his brief existence.
He had no history. His intelli-
gent eyes opened to look - out
upon the world, to love man-
kind, then closed again on the
cruel secrets of death.

The friend who presented me

with him had given him, ( per-

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

haps by antiphrasis, the startling
name of Pelleas. Why rechris-
ten him? For how can a poor
dog, loving, devoted, faithful,
disgrace the name of a man or

an imaginary hero?

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Pelleas had a great bulging,
powerful forehead, like that of
Socrates or Verlaine; and, under
a little black nose, blunt as a
churlish assent, a pair of large
hanging and symmetrical chops,
which made his head a sort of
massive, obstinate, pensive and
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

three-cornered menace. He was
beautiful after the manner of a
beautiful, natural monster that
has complied strictly with the
laws of its species. And what a
smile of attentive obligingness, of
incorruptible innocence, of affec-
tionate submission, of boundless
gratitude and total self-abandon-
ment lit up, at the least caress,
that adorable mask of ugliness!
Whence exactly did that smile
emanate? From the ingenuous
and melting eyes? From the
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

ears pricked up to catch the
words of man? From the fore-
head that unwrinkled to appreci-
ate and love, or from the stump
of a tail that wriggled at the
other end to testify to the inti-
mate and impassioned joy that
filled his small being, happy once
more to encounter the hand or
the glance of the god to whom
he surrendered himself?^

Pelleas was born in Paris, and
I had taken him to the country.
His bonny fat paws, shapeless
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

and not yet stiffened, carried
slackly through the unexplored
pathways of his new existence
his huge and serious head, flat-
nosed and, as it were, rendered
heavy with thought.

For this thankless and rather
sad head, like that of an over-
worked child, was beginning
the overwhelming work that op-
presses every brain at the start
of life. He had, in less than
five or six weeks, to get into his
mind, taking shape within it, an
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

image and a satisfactory concep-
tion of the universe. Man, aided
by all the knowledge of his own
elders and his brothers, takes

thirty or forty years to outline
that conception, but the humble
dog has to unravel it for himself
in a few days: /and yet, in the
eyes of a god, who should know
all things, would it not have the
same weight and the same value
as our own?)

It was a question, then, of
studying the ground, which can

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

be scratched and dug up and
which sometimes reveals surpris-
ing things; of casting at the
sky, which is uninteresting, for
there is nothing there to eat, one
glance that does away with it for
good and all; of discovering the
grass, the admirable and green
grass, the springy and cool grass,
a field for races and sports, a
friendly and boundless bed, ( in
which lies hidden the good and
wholesome couch-grass. ) It was
a question, also, of taking pro-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

miscuously a thousand urgent
and curious observations. It was
necessary, for instance, with no
other guide than pain, to learn
to calculate the height of objects
from the top of which you can
jump into space; to convince
yourself that it is vain to pursue
birds who fly away and that you
are unable to clamber up trees
after the cats who defy you there ;
to distinguish between the sunny
spots where it is delicious to
sleep and the patches of shade

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

in which you shiver; to remark
with stupefaction that the rain
does not fall inside the houses,
that water is cold, uninhabitable
and dangerous, while fire is
beneficent at a distance, but ter-
rible when you come too near;
to observe that the meadows,
the farm-yards and sometimes
the roads are haunted by giant
creatures with threatening horns,
creatures good-natured, perhaps,
and, at any rate, silent, creatures
who allow you to sniff at them
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

a little curiously without taking
offence, but who keep their real
thoughts to themselves. It was
necessary to learn, as the result
of painful and humiliating ex-
periment, that you are not at
liberty to obey all nature's laws
without distinction in the dwell-
ing of the gods ; to recognize that
the kitchen is the privileged and
most agreeable spot in that divine
dwelling, although you are hardly
allowed to abide in it because of
the cook, who is a considerable,

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

but jealous power; to learn that
doors are important and capri-
cious volitions, which sometimes
lead to felicity, but which most
often, hermetically closed, mute
and stern, haughty and heartless,
remain deaf to all entreaties; to
admit, once and for all, that the
essential good things of life, the
indisputable blessings, generally
imprisoned in pots and stewpans,
are almost always inaccessible;
to know how to look at them
with laboriously-acquired indiffer^
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

ence and to practise to take no
notice of them, saying to your-
self that here are objects which
are probably sacred, since merely
to skim them with the tip of a
respectful tongue is enough to
let loose the unanimous anger of
all the gods of the house.

And then, what is one to think
of the table on which so many
things happen that cannot be
guessed; of the derisive chairs
on which one is forbidden to
sleep; of the plates and dishes
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

that are empty by the time that
one can get at them ; of the lamp
that drives away the dark? . . .
How many orders, dangers, pro-
hibitions, problems, enigmas has
one not to classify in one's over-
burdened memory ! . . . And how
to reconcile all this with other
laws, other enigmas, wider and
more imperious, which one bears
within one's self, within one's in-
stinct, which spring up and de-
velop from one hour to the other,
which come from the depths of
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

time and the race, invade the
blood, the muscles and the nerves
and suddenly assert themselves
more irresistibly and more power-
fully than pain, the word of the
master himself, or the fear of
death ?

Thus, for instance, to quote
only one example, >vhen the hour
of sleep has struck for men, you
ka¥e~ retire^ to your hole, sur-
rounded by the darkness, the
silence and the formidable soli-
tude of the night. All is sleep
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

in the master's house. You feel
yourself very small and weak in
the presence of the mystery. You
know that the gloom is peopled
with foes who hover and lie in
wait. You suspect the trees, the
passing wind and the moonbeams.
You would like to hide, to sup-
press yourself by holding your
breath. But still the watch must
be kept; you must, at the least
sound, issue from your retreat,
face the invisible and bluntly dis-
turb the imposing silence of the
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

earth, at the risk of bringing
down the whispering evil or
crime upon yourself alone. Who-
ever the enemy be, even if he
be man, that is to say, the very
brother of the god whom it is
your business to defend, you
must attack him blindly, fly at
his throat, fasten your perhaps
sacrilegious teeth into human
flesh, disregard the spell of a
hand and voice similar to those
of your master, never be silent,
never attempt to escape, never
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

allow yourself to be tempted or
bribed and, lost in the night
without help, prolong the heroic
alarm to your last breath.

There is the great ancestral
duty, the essential duty, stronger
than death, which not even man's
will and anger are able to check.
All our humble history, linked
with that of the dog in our first
struggles against every breath-
ing thing, tends to prevent his
forgetting it. And when, in our
safer dwelling-places of to-day,
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

we happen to punish him for
his untimely zeal, he throws us
a glance of astonished reproach,
as though to point out to us that
we are in the wrong and that,
if we lose sight of the main
clause in the treaty of alliance
which he made with us at the
time when we lived in caves,
forests and fens, he continues
faithful to it in spite of us and
remains nearer to the eternal
truth of life, which is full of
snares and hostile forces. \
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

But how much care and study
are needed to succeed in fulfil-
ling this duty! And how com-
plicated it has become since the
days of the silent caverns and
the great deserted lakes ! It was
all so simple, then, so easy
and so clear. The lonely hollow
opened upon the side of the hill,
and all that approached, all that
moved on the horizon of the
plains or woods, was the un-

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mistakable enemy. . . . But to-
day you can no longer tell. . . .
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

You have to acquaint yourself
with a civilization of which you
disapprove, to appear to under-
stand a thousand incomprehen-
sible things. . . . Thus, it seems
evident that henceforth the whole
world no longer belongs to the
master, that his property con-
forms to unintelligible limits. . . .
It becomes necessary, therefore,
first of all to know exactly where
the sacred domain begins and
ends. Whom are you to suffer,
whom to stop? . . . There is
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

the road by which every one,
even the poor, has the right to
pass. Why? You do not know;
it is a fact which you deplore,
but which you are bound to ac-
cept. Fortunately, on the other
hand, here is the fair path which
none may tread. This path is
faithful to the sound traditions;
it is not to be lost sight of; for
by it enter into your daily exist-
ence the difficult problems of life.
Would you have an example?
You are sleeping peacefully in

OUR FRIEND THE DOG

a ray of the sun that covers
the threshold of the kitchen with
pearls. The earthenware pots are
amusing themselves by elbowing
and nudging one another on the
edge of the shelves trimmed with
paper lace-work. The copper
stewpans play at scattering spots
of light over the smooth white
walls. The motherly stove hums
a soft tune and dandles three
saucepans blissfully dancing; and,
from the little hole that lights up
its inside, defies the good dog
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

who cannot approach, by con-
stantly putting out at him its
fiery tongue. The clock, bored
in its oak case, before striking
the august hour of meal time,
swings its great gilt navel to
and fro ; and the cunning flies
tease your ears. On the glitter-
ing table lie a chicken, a hare,
three partridges, besides other
things which are called fruits —
peaches, melons, grapes — and
which are all good for nothing.
The cook guts a big silver fish

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

and throws the entrails (instead
of giving them to you !) into the
dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin ! In-
exhaustible treasury, receptacle of
windfalls, the jewel of the house !
You shall have your share of
it, an exquisite and surreptitious
share ; but it does not do to seem
to know where it is. You are
strictly forbidden to rummage in
it. Man in this way prohibits
many pleasant things, and life
would be dull indeed and your
days empty if you had to obey all
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

the orders of the pantry, the cellar
and the dining-room. Luckily,
he is absent-minded and does not
long remember the instructions
which he lavishes. He is easily
deceived. You achieve your ends
and do as you please, provided
you have the patience to await
the hour. You are subject to
man, and he is the one god; but
you none the less have your own
personal, exact and imperturbable
morality, which proclaims aloud
that illicit acts become most law-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

ful through the very fact that
they are performed without the
master's knowledge. Therefore,
let us close the watchful eye that
has seen. Let us pretend to sleep
and to dream of the moon. . . .

Hark! A gentle tapping at the
blue window that looks out on
the garden! What is it? Noth-
ing; a bough of hawthorn that
has come to see what we are do-
ing in the cool kitchen. Trees
are inquisitive and often excited ;
but they do not count, one has

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

nothing to say to them, they
are irresponsible, they obey the
wind, which has no principles.
. . . But what is that? I hear
steps! . . . Up, ears open; nose
on the alert! ... It is the
baker coming up to the rails,
while the postman is opening a
little gate in the hedge of lime-
trees. They are friends; it is
well; they bring something: you
can greet them and wag your
tail discreetly twice or thrice,
with a patronizing smile. ... »-i

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

Another alarm! What is it
now? A carriage pulls up in
front of the steps. The problem
is a complex one. Before all, it
is of consequence to heap copi-
ous insults on the horses, great,
proud beasts, who make no reply.
Meantime, you examine out of the
corner of your eye the persons
alighting. They are well-clad and
seem full of confidence. They are
probably going to sit at the table
of the gods. The proper thing is
to bark without acrimony, with a
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

shade of respect, so as to show
that you are doing your duty, but
that you are doing it with intelli-
gence. Nevertheless, you cherish
a lurking suspicion and, behind
the guests' backs, stealthily, you
sniff the air persistently and in a
knowing way, in order to discern
any hidden intentions.

But halting footsteps resound
outside the kitchen. This time
it is the poor man dragging his
crutch, the unmistakable enemy,
the hereditary enemy, the direct
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

descendant of him who roamed
outside the bone-cramped cave
which you suddenly see again in
your racial memory. Drunk with
indignation, your bark broken,
your teeth multiplied with hatred
and rage, you are about to seize
their reconcilable adversary by the
breeches, when the cook, armed
with her broom, the ancillary
and )fors worn sceptre, comes to
protect the traitor, and you are
obliged to go back to your hole,
where, with eyes filled with im-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

potent and slanting flames, you
growl out frightful, but futile
curses, thinking within yourself
that this is the end of all things,
and that the human species has
lost its notion of justice and in-
justice. . . .

Is that all? Not yet;(fbr the
smallest life is made up of innu-
merous duties, and it is a long
work to organize a happy exist-
ence upon the borderland of two
such different worlds as the world
of beasts and the world of men.
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

How should we fare if we had
to serve, while remaining within
our own sphere, a divinity, not
an imaginary one, like to our-
selves, because the offspring of
our own brain, but a god actually
visible, ever present, ever active
and as foreign, as superior to our
being as we are to the dog?J

We now, (to return to Pelleasj
know pretty well what to do and
how to behave on the master's
premises. But the world does
not end at the house-door, and,
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

beyond the walls and beyond the
hedge, there is a universe of which
one has not the custody, where
one is no longer at home, where
relations are changed. How are
we to stand in the street, in the
fields, in the market-place, in the
shops? In consequence of diffi-
cult and delicate observations, we
understand that we must take no
notice of passers-by ; obey no calls
but the master's ; be polite, with in-
difference, to strangers who pet us.
Next, we must conscientiously ful-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

fil certain obligations of mysterious
courtesy toward our brothers the
other dogs; respect chickens and
ducks; not appear to remark the
cakes at the pastry-cook's, which
spread themselves insolently within
reach of the tongue ; show to the
cats, who, on the steps of the
houses, provoke us by hideous
grimaces, a silent contempt, but
one that will not forget; and re-
member that it is lawful and even
commendable to chase and strangle
mice, rats, wild rabbits and, gen-
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OUR FRIEND ' IE DOG

q

erally speaking, all animals (we
learn to know them by secret
marks) that have not yet made
their peace with mankind.

All this and so much more!
. . . Was it surprising that Pel-
leas often appeared pensive in
the face of those numberless prob-
lems, and that his humble and
gentle look was often so profound
and grave, laden with cares and
full of unreadable questions?

Alas, he did not have time to
finish the long and heavy task
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

;which nature lays upon the in-
stinct that rises in order to ap-
proach a brighter region^) . . .
An ill of a mysterious character,
Vvhich seems specially to punish
the only animal that succeeds in
leaving the circle in which it is
born; an indefinite ill that carries
off hundreds of intelligent little
dogs, came to put an end to the
destiny and the happy education
of Pelleas. And now all those
efforts to achieve a little more
light ; all that ardour in loving,
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''"lla**v f***-"''

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

that courage in understanding;
all that affectionate gaiety and
innocent fawning; all those kind
and devoted looks,/ which turned
to man to ask for his assistance
against unjust death; all those
flickering gleams which came
from the profound abyss of a
world that is no longer ou
all those nearly human little
habits lie sadly in the cold
ground, under a flowering elder-
tree, in a corner of the garden.

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II

Man loves the dog, but how
much more ought he to love it
if he considered, in the inflexible
harmony of the laws of nature,
the sole exception, which is that
love of a being that succeeds in
piercing, in order to draw closer
to us, the partitions, every else-
where impermeable, that separate
the species ! We are alone, abso-
lutely alone on this chance planet ;
and amid all the forms of life that
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

surround us, not one, excepting
the dog, has made an alliance
with us. A few creatures fear
us, most are unaware of us, and
not one loves us. In the world
of plants, we have dumb and
motionless slaves ; but they serve
us in spite of themselves. They
simply endure our laws and our
yoke. They are impotent pris-
oners, victims incapable of escap-
ing, but silently rebellious; and,
so soon as we lose sight of them,
hasten

they

betray

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

turn to their former wild and mis-
chievous liberty. The rose and the
corn, had they wings, would fly at
our approach like the birds.

Among the animals, we num-
ber a few servants who have
submitted only through indiffer-
ence, cowardice or stupidity: the
uncertain and craven horse, who
responds only to pain and is
attached to nothing; the passive
and dejected ass, who stays with
us only because he knows not
what to do nor where to go,
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

but who nevertheless, under the
cudgel and the pack-saddle, re-
tains the idea that lurks behind
his ears; the cow and the ox,
happy so long as they are eating,
and docile because, for centuries,
they have not had a thought of
their own; the affrighted sheep,
who knows no other master than
terror; the hen, who is faithful
to the poultry-yard because she
finds more maize and wheat there
than in the neighbouring forest.
I do not speak of the cat, to whom
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

we are nothing more than a too
large and uneatable prey: the
ferocious cat, whose sidelong con-
tempt tolerates us only as en-
cumbering parasites in our own
homes. She, at least, curses us
in her mysterious heart; but all
the others live beside us as they
might live beside a rock or a
tree. They do not love us, do
not know us, scarcely notice us.
They are unaware of our life,
our death, our departure, our re-
turn, our sadness, our joy, our
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

smile. They do not even hear
the sound of our voice, so soon
as it no longer threatens them;
and, when they look at us, it
is with the distrustful bewilder-
ment of the horse, in whose eye
still hovers the infatuation of the
elk or gazelle that sees us for the
first time, or with the dull stupor
of the ruminants, who look upon
us as a momentary and useless
accident of the pasture.

For thousands of years, they
have been living at our side, as
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

foreign to our thoughts, our affec-
tions, our habits as though the
least fraternal of the stars had
dropped them but yesterday on
our globe. In the boundless in-
terval that separates man from
all the other creatures, we have
succeeded only, by dint of patience,
in making them take two or three
illusory steps. And if, to-mor-
row, leaving their feelings toward
us untouched, nature were to
give them the intelligence and the
weapons wherewith to conquer
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

us, I confess that I should dis-
trust the hasty vengeance of the
horse, the obstinate reprisals of
the ass and the maddened meek-
ness of the sheep. I should shun
the cat as I should shun the tiger;
and even the good cow, solemn
and somnolent, would inspire me
with but a wary confidence. As
for the hen, with her round, quick
eye, as when discovering a slug or
a worm, I am sure that she would
devour me without a thought.

;•.• . t
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Now, in this indifference and this
total want of comprehension in
which everything that surrounds
us lives; in this incommunicable
world, where everything has its ob-
ject hermetically contained within
itself, where every destiny is self-
circumscribed, where there exist
among the creatures no other
relations than those of execu-
tioners and victims, eaters and
eaten, where nothing is able to
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

leave its steel-bound sphere, where
death alone establishes cruel rela-
tions of cause and effect between
neighbouring lives, where not the
smallest sympathy has ever made
a conscious leap from one species
to another, one animal alone,
among all that breathes upon the
earth, has succeeded in break-
ing through the prophetic circle,
in escaping from itself to come
bounding toward us, definitely to
cross the enormous zone of dark-
ness, ice and silence that iso-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

lates each category of existence in
nature's unintelligible plan. This
animal, our good familiar dog,
simple and unsurprising as may
to-day appear to us what he has
done, in thus perceptibly drawing
nearer to a world in which he
was not born and for which he
was not destined, has neverthe-
less performed one of the most
unusual and improbable acts that
we can find in the general history
of life. When was this recogni-
tion of man by beast, this extraor-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

dinary passage from darkness to
light, effected? Did we seek out
the poodle, the collie, or the mas-
tiff from among the wolves and
the jackals, or did he come
spontaneously to us? We cannot
tell. So far as our human annals
stretch, he is at our side, as at
present ; but what are human an-
nals in comparison with the times
of which we have no witness?
The fact remains that he is there in
our houses, as ancient, as rightly
placed, as perfectly adapted to our

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

habits as though he had appeared
on this earth, such as he now is,
at the same time as ourselves.
We have not to gain his confidence
or his friendship : he is born our
friend; while his eyes are still
closed, already he believes in us :
even before his birth, he has given
himself to man. But the word
"friend" does not exactly depict
his affectionate worship. He loves
us and reveres us as though we
had drawn him out of nothing.
He is, before all, our creature full
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

of gratitude and more devoted
than the apple of our eye. He
is our intimate and impassioned
slave, whom nothing discourages,
whom nothing repels, whose ardent
trust and love nothing can impair.
He has solved, in an admirable
and touching manner, the terrify-
ing problem which human wisdom
would have to solve if a divine
race came to occupy our globe.
He has loyally, religiously, irrevo-
cably recognized man's superior-
ity and has surrendered himself ^

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

to him body and soul, without
after-thought, without any inten-
tion to go back, reserving of his
independence, his instinct and his
character only the small part in-
dispensable to the continuation
of the life prescribed by nature.
With an unquestioning certainty,
an unconstraint and a simplicity
that surprise us a little, deeming
us better and more powerful than
all that exists, he betrays, for our
benefit, the whole of the animal
kingdom to which he belongs
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

and, without scruple, denies his
race, his kin, his mother and his
young.

But he loves us not only in his
consciousness and his intelligence :
the very instinct of his race, the en-
tire unconsciousness of his species,
it appears, think only of us, dream
only of being useful to us. To
serve us better, to adapt himself
better to our different needs, he
has adopted every shape and been
able infinitely to vary the faculties,
the aptitudes which he places at
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

our disposal. Is he to aid us in
the pursuit of game in the plains ?
His legs lengthen inordinately, his
muzzle tapers, his lungs widen,
he becomes swifter than the deer.
Does our prey hide under wood ?
The docile genius of the species,
forestalling our desires, presents
us with the basset, a sort of almost
footless serpent, which steals into
the closest thickets. Do we ask
that he should drive our flocks?
The same compliant genius grants
him the requisite size, intelligence,
H 56 H

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

energy and vigilance. Do we in-
tend him to watch and defend our
house? His head becomes round
and monstrous, in order that his
jaws may be more powerful, more
formidable and more tenacious.
Are we taking him to the south?
His hair grows shorter and lighter,
so that he may faithfully accom-
pany us under the rays of a hotter
sun. Are we going up to the
north? His feet grow larger, the
better to tread the snow; his fur
thickens, in order that the cold
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

may not compel him to abandon
us. Is he intended only for us to
play with, to amuse the leisure of
our eyes, to adorn or enliven the
home? He clothes himself in a
sovereign grace and elegance, he
makes himself smaller than a doll
to sleep on our knees by the fire-
side, or even consents, should our
fancy demand it, to appear a little
ridiculous to please us.

You shall not find, in nature's
immense crucible, a single living
being that has shown a like sup-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

pleness, a similar abundance of
forms, the same prodigious faculty
of accommodation to our wishes.
This is because, in the world which
we know, among the different and
primitive geniuses that preside
over the evolution of the several
species, there exists not one, ex-
cepting that of the dog, that ever
gave a thought to the presence
of man.

It will, perhaps, be said that
we have been able to transform
almost as profoundly some of our
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

domestic animals : our hens, our
pigeons, our ducks, our cats, our
horses, our rabbits, for instance.
Yes, perhaps; although such trans-
formations are not comparable with
those undergone by the dog and
although the kind of service which
these animals render us remains,
so to speak, invariable. In any
case, whether this impression be
purely imaginary or correspond
with a reality, it does not appear
that we feel in these transfor-
mations the same unfailing and

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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

preventing good will, the same
sagacious and exclusive love. For
the rest, it is quite possible that
the dog, or rather the inacces-
sible genius of his race, troubles
scarcely at all about us and that
we have merely known how to
make use of various aptitudes

offered bv the abundant chances

•I

of life. It matters not: as we
know nothing of the substance
of things, we must needs cling to
appearances; and it is sweet to
establish that, at least in appear-
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

atice, there is on the planet where,
like unacknowledged kings, we
live in solitary state, a being that
loves us.

However the case may stand
with these appearances, it is none
the less certain that, in the aggre-
gate of intelligent creatures that
have rights, duties, a mission and
a destiny, the dog is a really priv-
ileged animal. He occupies in
this world a pre-eminent posi-
tion enviable among all. He is
the only living being that has
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

found and recognizes an indubi-
table, tangible, unexceptionable
and definite god. He knows to
what to devote the best part of
himself. He knows to whom
above him to give himself. He
has not to seek for a perfect,
superior and infinite power in the
darkness, amid successive lies,
hypotheses and dreams. That
power is there, before him, and
he moves in its light. He knows
the supreme duties which we all
do not know. He has a morality
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

which surpasses all that he is
able to discover in himself and
which he can practise without
scruple and without fear. He
possesses truth in its fulness.
He has a certain and infinite
ideal.

H 64

IV

And it was thus that, the other
day, before his illness, I saw my
little Pelleas sitting at the foot of
my writing-table, his tail carefully
folded under his paws, his head
a little on one side, the better to
question me, at once attentive and
tranquil, as a saint should be in the
presence of God. He was happy
with the happiness which we, per-
haps, shall never know, since it
sprang from the smile and the
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OUR FRIEND THE DOG

approval of a life incomparably
higher than his own. He was
there, studying, drinking in all my
looks; and he replied to them
gravely, as from equal to equal, to
inform me, no doubt, that, at least
through the eyes the most imma-
terial organ that transformed into
affectionate intelligence the light
which we enjoyed, he knew that
he was saying to me all that love
should say. And, when I saw him
thus, young, ardent and believing,
bringing me, in some wise, from
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XT

XT
xf

OUR FRIEND THE DOG

s

the depths of unwearied nature,
quite fresh news of life and trust-
ing and wonderstruck, as though
he had been the first of his race
that came to inaugurate the earth
and as though we were still in the
first days of the world's existence,
I envied the gladness of his cer-
tainty, compared it with the destiny
of man, still plunging on every side
into darkness, and said to myself
that the dog who meets with a good
master is the happier of the two.

67

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