He saw, of course, at once, that Hamlet was a mongrel, but he had, I fancy, an idea that he should play Sancho Panza to his own Quixote. He often told himself that it was absurdly beneath his dignity to go about with such a fellow, but for pretty play of wit, agility in snatching another dog’s bone and remaining dignified as he did so, for a handsome melancholy and gentle contempt, he had never known Hamlet’s equal.
Hamlet counted it as one of his most successful days when he brought Pompey into the Orange Street circle. There was not a dog there but recognized that Pompey was a cut above them all, a dog who had won prizes and might win prizes yet again (although, between you and me, self-indulgence was already thickening him). All the sycophants in Orange Street (and there, as elsewhere, there were plenty of these creatures) made up at once to Pompey and approached Hamlet with disgusting flatteries. A pug, known as Flossie, slobbered at Hamlet’s feet, telling him that she had long been intending to call on him, but that her mistress was so exacting that it was very difficult to find time “for all one’s social duties.” Hamlet regarded the revolting object (glistening with grease and fat) with high contempt, his beard assuming its most ironical point.
“I had a very nice bone waiting for you in the kitchen,” he said.
Flossie shivered. “A bone with you anywhere would be a delight,” she wheezed.
Hamlet was, of course, in no way deceived by these flatteries. He knew his world. He watched even his friend Pompey with a good deal of irony. He would have supposed that his friend was too well-bred to care what these poor creatures should say to him; nevertheless Pompey was more pleased than he should have been. He sat there, round the corner, just by the monument, and received the homage with a pleasure that was most certainly not forced. He was himself a little conscious of this. “Awful bore,” he explained afterwards to Hamlet, “having to listen to all they had to say. But what’s one to do? One can’t be rude, you know. One doesn’t want to be impolite. And I must say they were very kind.”
Hamlet was now restored into the best Orange Street society—all received him back—all with one very important exception. This was a white poodle, the pride and joy of a retired military colonel who lived at 41 Orange Street, and his name was Mephistopheles—Mephisto for short. Ever since Hamlet’s first introduction to the Cole family he and this dog had been at war. Mephisto was not a dog of the very highest breed, but his family was quite good enough. And then, being French, he could say a good deal about his origins and nobody could contradict him. He did not, as a fact, say very much. He was too haughty to be talkative, too superior to be familiar. He had no friends. There was a miserable Dachs, Fritz by name, who claimed to be a friend, but everyone knew how Mephisto laughed at Fritz when he was not there, calling him opprobrious names and commenting on his German love of food.
From the very first Mephisto had seemed to Hamlet an indecent dog. The way that he was here naked and there over-hairy had nothing to be said for it. His naked part was quite pink.
Then Mephisto had the French weakness of parsimony. Never was there a meaner dog. He stored bones as no dog had a right to do, and had never been known to give anything to anybody. Then he had the other French weakness of an incapacity for friendship. The domestic life might perhaps appeal to him strongly (no one knew whether he were married or not), but friendship meant nothing to him.
He was as are all the French, practical, unsentimental, seeing life as it really is and allowing no nonsense. If he had those French defects he had also the great French virtue of courage. He was afraid of nothing and of no one. No dog was too big for him, and he once had a fight with a St. Bernard who happened to stroll down his way that was historic.
He was no coward, as Hamlet very well knew—but how Hamlet hated him! All his fur bristled if Mephisto was within half a mile. Mephisto’s superior smile, his contempt at the rather sentimental enthusiasms to which Hamlet occasionally gave vent (that went, as they often do, with his cynicism), these made a conflict inevitable.