"Bring that dog to this table," said he to Balsamo, who laid the creature on a marble slab.
Seeming to foresee its doom and having probably already been handled by the dissector, the animal shuddered, wriggled and yelped at contact of the cold stone.
"So you believe in life, since you do in death?" squeaked Althotas. "This dog looks live enough, eh?"
"Certainly, as it moves and whines."
"How ugly black dogs are! I should like white ones another time. Howl away, you cur," said the vivisectionist with his lugubrious laugh; "howl, to convince Grand Seignior Acharat that you live."
He pierced the animal at a certain muscle so that he whimpered instead of barking.
"Good! push the bell of the air pump hither. But stay, I must ask what kind of death you prefer for him—deem best?"
"I do not know what you mean; death is death, master."
"Very correct, what you say, and I agree with you. Since one kind of death is the same as another, exhaust the air, Acharat."
Balsamo worked the air pump, and the air in the bell of glass hissed out at the bottom, so that the little puppy grew uneasy at the first, looked around, began to sniff, put his paw to the issue till the pain of the pressure made him take it away, and then he fell suffocated, puffed up and asphyxiated.