The mouse-coloured dog was looking very melancholy and snapping at the flies. He drawled out in a whining tone:
“Eh, it’s a dog’s life!”
“And where is the justice of it all?”—the greyhound, who had been silent up to this point, began to agitate herself—“You, Mr. Poodle, pardon me, I haven’t the honour of knowing your name.”
“Arto, professor of equilibristics, at your service.” The poodle bowed.
“Well, tell me, Mr. Professor, you have apparently had such great experience, let alone your learning—tell me, where is the higher justice of it all? Are human beings so much more worthy and better than we are, that they are allowed to take advantage of so many cruel privileges with impunity?”
“They are not any better or any more worthy than we are, dear young lady, but they are stronger and wiser,” answered Arto, with some heat. “Oh, I know the morals of these two-legged animals very well.... In the first place, they are greedy—greedier than any dog on earth. They have so much bread and meat and water that all these monsters could be satisfied and well-fed all their lives. But instead of sharing it out, a tenth of them get all the provisions for life into their hands, and not being able to devour it all themselves, they force the remaining nine-tenths to go hungry. Now, tell me, is it possible that a well-fed dog would not share a gnawed bone with his neighbour?”
“He’d share it, of course he would!” agreed all the listeners.
“H’m,” coughed the dog doubtfully.
“And besides that, people are wicked. Who could ever say that one dog would kill another—on account of love or envy or malice? We bite one another sometimes, that’s true. But we don’t take each other’s lives.”
“No, indeed we don’t,” they all affirmed.