Ovr friend the dog

OUR FRIEND
THEDOG fy

MAVHICB MAETERLINCK

Srcaettteb to

Wqt |Kbrarg

of the

33tttorstig of tEnnmto

Robert B. Johnston

and
Editha W. Johnston

OVR FRIEND,
THE DOG

OVR/ FRIEND
THE DOG #

MAVRICE MAETERLINCK

iJTuthor (/"THE LIFE OF THE BEE etc

WITH ILLVSTRATION5 <^PAVLJ MEYIAN
and DECORATIONS 6y CHARLES B FALLS :

NEW YORK
DODD,MEAD U COMPANY

1905

S52673 _

OVR FRIEND,
THE DOG

I

I 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 intelligent
eyes opened to look out upon the
world, to love mankind, then
closed again on the cruel secrets
of death.

The friend who presented me

with him had given him, perhaps
by antiphrasis, the startling name
of Pelleas. Why rechristen him?
For how can a poor dog, loving,
devoted, faithful, disgrace the
name of a man or an imaginary
hero?

Pelleas had a great bulging,
powerful forehead, like that of
Socrates or Verlaine; and, under
a little black nose, blunt as a churl-
ish assent, a pair of large hanging
and symmetrical chops, which
made his head a sort of massive,
obstinate, pensive and three-cor-

nered 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 in-
nocence, of affectionate submis-
sion, of boundless gratitude and
total self-abandonment lit up, at
the least caress, that adorable
mask of ugliness! Whence ex-
actly did that smile emanate?
From the ingenuous and melting
eyes ? From the ears pricked up
to catch the words of man ? From

1-1

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

mm

■AM^VMR

i'l|b

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
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 promiscuously a
thousand urgent and curious ob-
servations. 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 distin-
guish between the sunny spots
where it is delicious to sleep and
the patches of shade in which
you shiver ; to remark with stupe-
faction that the rain does not fall
inside the houses, that water is
cold, uninhabitable and danger-
ous, while fire is beneficent at a
distance, but terrible when you
come too near; to observe that

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the meadows, the farm-yards and
sometimes the roads are haunted
by giant creatures with threaten-
ing horns, creatures good-natured,
perhaps, and, at any rate, silent,
creatures who allow you to sniff
at them 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
experiment, 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,
but jealous power ; to learn that
doors are important and capricious
volitions, which sometimes lead
to felicity, but which most often,
hermetically closed, mute and
stern, haughty and heartless, re-
main 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-
ence and to practise to take no
notice of them, saying to yourself
that here are objects which are
probably sacred, since merely to
skim them with the tip of a re-
spectful 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

1

guessed ; of the derisive chairs on
which one is forbidden to sleep;
of the plates and dishes that are
empty by the time that one can get
at them ; of the lamp that drives
away the dark ? . . . How many
orders, dangers, prohibitions,
problems, enigmas has one not to
classify in one's overburdened
memory! . . . And how to rec-
oncile all this with other laws,
other enigmas, wider and more
imperious, which one bears within
one's self, within one's instinct,
which spring up and develop from

one hour to the other, which come
from the depths of time and the
race, invade the blood, the muscles
and the nerves and suddenly assert
themselves more irresistibly and
more powerfully than pain, the
word of the master himself, or the
fear of death?

Thus, for instance, to quote
only one example, when the hour
of sleep has struck for men, you
have retired to your hole, sur-
rounded by the darkness, the
silence and the formidable solitude
of the night. All is sleep in the

Mb

master's house. You feel your-
self 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
earth, at the risk of bringing down

the whispering evil or crime upon
yourself alone. Whoever the en-
emy 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 es-
cape, never 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 breathing
thing, tends to prevent his forget-
ting it. And when, in our safer
dwelling-places of to-day, we hap-
pen to punish him for his untimely
Zeal, he throws us a glance of aston-
ished 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.
But how much care and study
are needed to succeed in fulfilling
this duty ! And how complicated
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 unmistakable enemy.
. . . But to-day you can no longer
tell. . . . You have to acquaint
yourself with a civilization of
which you disapprove, to appear
to understand a thousand incom-
prehensible 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 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 accept.
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
. **— warn MkMtm ^ihh

<-.

m.
ii

Vv

to be lost sight of ; for by it enter
into your daily existence the diffi-
cult problems of life.

Would you have an example ?
You are sleeping peacefully in 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
stew-pans play at scattering spots
of light over the smooth white
walls. The motherly stove hums

; : ■.::_;."

~t^T'. /-j.*'; /*;*>

a soft tune and dandles three
saucepans blissfully dancing ; and,
from the little hole that lights up
its inside, defies the good dog who
cannot approach, by constantly
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 glit-
tering table lie a chicken, a hare,
three partridges, besides other
things which are called fruits —
peaches, melons, grapes — a n d

!^f§^

ilia

9

which are all good for nothing.
The cook guts a big silver fish
and throws the entrails (instead
of giving them to you !) into the
dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin 1 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

y

days empty if you had to obey all
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 lawful

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 ? Nothing ;
a bough of hawthorn that has
come to see what we are doing in
the cool kitchen. Trees are in-
quisitive and often excited; but
they do not count, one has nothing
to say to them, they are irrespon-

'4»

sible, 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. . . .

Another alarm ! What is it
now? A carriage pulls up in
front of the steps. The problem

' ■'- ■ vW^v^i*A^P**rj»;

is a complex one. Before allt it is
of consequence to heap copious
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 shade of respect, so as to
show that you are doing your
duty, but that you are doing it
with intelligence. Nevertheless,

■ 1

you cherish a lurking suspicion
and, behind the guests' backs,
stealthily, you sniff the air per-
sistently 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
descendant of him who roamed
outside the bone-cramped cave
which you suddenly see again
in your racial memory. Drunk

with indignation, your bark bro-
ken, your teeth multiplied with
hatred and rage, you are about
to seize their reconcilable adver-
sary by the breeches, when the
cook, armed with her broom, the
ancillary and forsworn sceptre,
comes to protect the traitor, and
you are obliged to go back to
your hole, where, with eyes filled
with impotent 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; for the
smallest life is made up of innu-
merous duties, and it is a long
work to organize a happy exis-
tence upon the borderland of two
such different worlds as the world
of beasts and the world of men.
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 ?

We now, to return to Pelleas,
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,
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 indifference, to strangers
who pet us. Next, we must
conscientiously fulfil certain obli-
gations of mysterious courtesy
toward our brothers the other
dogs ; respect chickens and ducks ;
not appear to remark the cakes
at the pastry-cooks, which spread
themselves insolently within reach
of the tongue ; show to the cats,

wm

who, on the steps of the houses,
provoke us by hideous grimaces,
a silent contempt, but one that
will not forget; and remember
that it is lawful and even com-
mendable to chase and strangle
mice, rats, wild rabbits and, gen-
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
Pelleas often appeared pensive in
the face of those numberless prob-

mwnfm

m

x

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
which nature lays upon the in-
stinct that rises in order to ap-
proach a brighter region. . . .
An ill of a mysterious character,
which 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,
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 ours ; all
those nearly human little habits

f*

lie sadly in the cold ground, un-
der a flowering elder-tree, in a
corner of the garden.

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
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,
they hasten to betray us and
return to their former wild and
mischievous 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

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us only because he knows not
what to do nor where to go,
but who nevertheless, under the
cudgel and the pack-saddle, retains
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 ter-
ror; 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
we are nothing more than a too
large and uneatable prey: the
ferocious cat, whose sidelong con-
tempt tolerates us only as encum-
bering 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

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
foreign to our thoughts, our affec-

fsafe

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
us, I confess that I should distrust
the hasty vengeance of the horse,

the obstinate reprisals of the ass
and the maddened meekness 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.

m

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
object hermetically contained with-
in 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
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 breaking
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 isolates
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 recognition
of man by beast, this extraordi-
nary passage from darkness to
light, effected ? Did we seek out
the poodle, the collie, or the mas-

WM

tiff from among the wolves and
the jackals, or did he come spon-
taneously 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
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 confi-

<r&sni

dence 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
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

■ III mmBBUBKr ^r^*&^

ardent trust and love nothing can
impair. He has solved, in an
admirable and touching manner,
the terrifying problem which
human wisdom would have to
solve if a divine race came to
occupy our globe. He has loyally,
religiously, irrevocably recognized
man's superiority and has sur-
rendered himself to him body and
soul, without after-thought, with-
out any intention to go back,
reserving of his independence, his
instinct and his character only
the small part indispensable to the

continuation of the life prescribed
by nature. With an unquestion-
ing 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 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
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,
energy and vigilance. Do we
intend him to watch and defend
our house? His head becomes
round and monstrous, in order that
his jaws may be more power-
ful, more formidable and more
tenacious. Are we taking him to
the south? His hair grows

V

shorter and lighter, so that he
may faithfully accompany 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 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-
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 dif-
ferent and primitive geniuses that
preside over the evolution of the
several species, there exists not
one, excepting 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
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 impres-

sion be purely imaginary or
correspond with a reality, it does
not appear that we feel in these
transformations the same unfail-
ing and preventing good will, the
same sagacious and exclusive
love. For the rest, it is quite
possible that the dog, or rather
the inaccessible genius of his race,
troubles scarcely at all about us
and that we have merely known
how to make use of various apti-
tudes offered by the abundant
chances of life. It matters not:
as we know nothing of the sub-

stance of things, we must needs
cling to appearances; and it is
sweet to establish thatt at least
in appearance, there is on the
planet where, like unacknowl-
edged 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
privileged animal. He occupies
in this world a pre-eminent posi-

Isifc

tion enviable among all. He is
the only living being that has
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
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.

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, perhaps, shall never know,
since it sprang from the smile
and the approval of a life incom-
parably 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 immaterial organ that
transformed into affectionate in-
telligence 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
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 exist-

r*>>

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Maeterlinck, Maurice
Our friend the dog