Oh! what a love is a mother's!—a love always good, always devoted, always faithful; a true diamond lost amongst all the false stones with which youth decks its happiness; a pure and limpid carbuncle, which shines in joy as in sorrow, by night as by day! My mother's first thoughts were nought but joyful ones at seeing me again; then, at last, she asked me how it was I had returned home on Thursday instead of on Saturday, to spend Sunday with her, going back on Monday as usual.
I dared not tell her of the misfortune that had befallen me. I told her that, as business was slack at the office, I had obtained a holiday for several days, which I meant to spend with her.
"But," my mother observed, "I see you are wearing your hunting-coat and breeches."
"Yes, why not?"
"How is it you have nothing in your game-bag?"
It was not indeed customary for me to return with the game-bag empty.
"I was so anxious to see you, dear mother, that instead of shooting, I came the shortest way, by the high road."
I lied. Had I spoken the truth, I should have said, "Alas! dear mother, I was so much taken up with thinking what effect my news would have upon you that I never thought of shooting, though at other times I have forgotten everything for that passion." But had I told her that, I should have had to tell her the news, and I wanted to delay it as long as possible.
An incident freed me from embarrassment and diverted my mother's thoughts for the moment. I heard my dog howl.
I ran to the door. The next house to ours was that of a butcher, called Mauprivez. In the front of the butcher's slab there was a long cross-bar of painted wood, in which at different intervals iron hooks were fixed to hold various specimens of meat. In jumping up at a calfs lights, Pyramus had got hooked like a carp on a fish-hook, and hung suspended. That was why he howled, and, as will readily be imagined, not without cause. I seized hold of him by the body, unhooked him, and he rushed into the stable, his jaws bleeding. If I ever write the history of the dogs that have belonged to me, Pyramus shall have a prominent place by the side of Milord. I may therefore be allowed to leave in suspense the interest my return naturally created, to talk a bit about Pyramus, who, in spite of his name, which indicated that all sorts of love misfortunes were before him, had never had, to my knowledge, any misadventures except gastronomic ones. Pyramus was a large chestnut-coloured dog, of very good French pedigree, who had been given me when quite a puppy, with a fox-cub of the same age, which the keeper who gave him me (it was poor Choron of la Maison-Neuve) had had suckled by the same mother. I often amused myself by watching the different instincts of these two animals develop, as they were placed opposite one another in the yard in two parallel recesses. For the first three or four months an almost brotherly intimacy reigned between Cartouche and Pyramus. I need not mention that Cartouche was the fox and Pyramus the dog. Nor need I mention that the name of Cartouche was given to the fox in allusion to his instincts of stealing and depredation. It was Cartouche who began to declare war on Pyramus, although he was the weaker looking; this declaration of war took place over some bones which were within Cartouche's boundary, but which Pyramus had surreptitiously tried to annex. The first time Pyramus attempted this piracy, Cartouche snarled; the second time, he showed his teeth; the third time, he bit. Cartouche was the more to be excused because he was always on the chain, while Pyramus had his hours of liberty. Cartouche, restrained to a very circumscribed walk, could not therefore, at full length of his chain, do unto Pyramus the evil deeds which Pyramus, abusing his liberty, was guilty of on his side. On account of this captivity, I was able to notice the superior intelligence of the fox over that of the dog. Both were gourmands in the highest degree, with this difference, that Pyramus was more of a glutton and Cartouche more of an epicure. When they both stretched to the full length of their chains, they could reach a distance of nearly four feet, from the opening of their recesses. Add ten inches for the length of Pyramus's head, four inches for Cartouche's pointed nose, and you will arrive at this result, that whilst Pyramus, at the length of his chain, could reach a bone at four feet ten inches from his recess, Cartouche could only perpetrate the same deed four feet four inches from his. Very well, if I placed a bone six feet off,—that is to say, out of the reach of both,—Pyramus had to content himself with stretching his chain with the whole strength of his sturdy shoulders, but not being able to break it, he would stand with fixed bloodshot eyes, his jaws slobbering and open, attempting from time to time, with plaintive whines, to exorcise the distance, or, by desperate efforts, to break his chain. If the bone were not either taken away or given him, he would have gone mad; but he had never succeeded, by any ingenious contrivance, to snatch the prey beyond his reach. It was another matter with Cartouche. His preliminary tactics were the same as those of Pyramus, and consequently equally fruitless. But soon he began to reflect, rubbing a paw on his nose; then, all at once, as though a sudden illumination had come into his mind, he turned himself round, adding the length of his body to the length of his chain, dragged the bone into the circle of his kingdom, by the help of one of his hind paws, turned round again, seized hold of the bone, and entered into his kennel, from which it was not rejected until it was as clean and polished as ivory. Pyramus saw Cartouche perform this trick ten times; he would howl with jealousy as he listened to his comrade's teeth grinding on the bone which he was gnawing; but, I repeat, he never had the intelligence to do the same thing himself, and to use his hind paw as a hook to draw the tit-bit within his reach. Cartouche was of superior intelligence to Pyramus in a thousand other instances such as this, although his tractability was always inferior. But it is common knowledge that with animals as with human beings, the capacity for being trained is not always, nay is scarcely ever, combined with intelligence.