"What! twelve degrees! Oh, good-night! I'm off to bed!"
A dog came in, half mastiff, half hound, mangy, with yellowish hair and lolling tongue.
What were they to do? There was no bell, and their housekeeper was deaf. They were quaking, but did not venture to budge, for fear of being bitten.
Pécuchet thought it a good idea to hurl threats at him, and at the same time to roll his eyes about.
Then the dog began to bark; and he jumped about the scales, in which Pécuchet, by clinging on to the cords and bending his knees, tried to raise himself up as high as ever he could.
"You're getting your death of cold up there!" said Bouvard; and he began making smiling faces at the dog, while pretending to give him things.
The dog, no doubt, understood these advances. Bouvard went so far as to caress him, stuck the animal's paws on his shoulders, and rubbed them with his finger-nails.
"Hollo! look here! there, he's off with my breeches!"
The dog cuddled himself upon them, and lay quiet.
At last, with the utmost precautions, they ventured the one to come down from the platform of the scales, and the other to get out of the bathing-tub; and when Pécuchet had got his clothes on again, he gave vent to this exclamation: