"You have a handsome poodle there, my little man," he said to Lolo, in a foreigner's too distinct and careful Italian.
"Moufflou is beautiful," said Lolo, with pride. "You should see him when he is just washed; but we can only wash him on Sundays, because then Tasso is at home."
"How old is your dog?"
"Three years old."
"Does he do any tricks?"
"Does he!" said Lolo, with a very derisive laugh: "why, Moufflou can do anything! He can walk on two legs ever so long; make ready, present, and fire; die; waltz; beg, of course; shut a door; make a wheelbarrow of himself; there is nothing he will not do. Would you like to see him do something?"
"Very much," said the foreigner.
To Moufflou and to Lolo the street was the same thing as home; this cheery piazzetta by the church, so utterly empty sometimes, and sometimes so noisy and crowded, was but the wider threshold of their home to both the poodle and the child.
So there, under the lofty and stately walls of the old church, Lolo put Moufflou through his exercises. They were second nature to Moufflou, as to most poodles. He had inherited his address at them from clever parents, and, as he had never been frightened or coerced, all his lessons and acquirements were but play to him. He acquitted himself admirably, and the crockery-venders came and looked on, and a sacristan came out of the church and smiled, and the barber left his customer's chin all in a lather while he laughed, for the good folk of the quarter were all proud of Moufflou and never tired of him, and the pleasant, easy-going, good-humored disposition of the Tuscan populace is so far removed from the stupid buckram and whale-bone in which the new-fangled democracy wants to imprison it.
The stranger also was much diverted by Moufflou's talents, and said, half aloud, "How this clever dog would amuse poor Victor! Would you bring your poodle to please a sick child I have at home!" he said, quite aloud, to Lolo, who smiled and answered that he would. Where was the sick child?