We redoubled our pace, and soon reached him.
The interior of the little house that M. Deviolaine had built some eight or ten years ago, and called la Maison-Neuve, was most charmingly pretty and well arranged.
I can still picture the interior as I saw it when I stepped over the threshold; its bed hung with green curtains; the chimney-piece adorned with three guns on the left; at the head of the bed a window brightened by a ray of winter sunshine, at the foot of the bed another window, in order to enable one to see both sides of the road without going out; a cabinet full of plates of a big flowery pattern; and a complete collection of four-footed animals and of stuffed birds.
Amongst these animals there was a terrible looking sheepdog, the colour of a wolf, with its hair all on end, its eyes bloodshot, and its mouth open and slavering. Choron said he had only been afraid once in his life, and he had immortalised the cause of his fear.
The cause of his fear was this dog, which, before being a stuffed dog, was a mad dog.
Choron was one day pruning the trees in his little garden in front of the house, when all at once he saw this dog trying to get through his hedge; he soon saw, from the feverish look of its eyes, and its foaming mouth, that the animal was mad, and he ran for the house. But, although Choron ran well, the dog ran still better; so that Choron had neither time to shut his door behind him nor to take his gun down from the chimney-piece. The only thing he could do was to leap on his bed and to roll the counterpane round his body, to ward off bites as much as possible. The dog leapt on the bed almost as soon as Choron did, and began haphazard to bite the bale of cotton which encased a man. All at once Choron spread the coverlet out as wide as it would go, rolled the dog in it, and whilst it was trying to get out he seized his gun, and in an instant fired twice into the counterpane, which began to be dyed With blood, then to heave convulsively for some seconds. But these undulations soon decreased, and finally ceased altogether, to give place to the last shudders of ebbing life. Choron unrolled the coverlet, and found the animal was dead.
He had the dog stuffed, and mounted it upon the blood-stained counterpane, which it had bitten finely.
One look at the beast, even stuffed as it was, was enough to make one understand Choron's fear.
I examined all the animals, one after the other. I acquainted myself with their history, from the first to the last; I asked questions while I munched my bread and cheese; I drank two glasses of wine while I listened to the replies, and still I was ready to start before the others.