I opened the door,—just a crack,—and looked. The monster was no longer on the porch. People were rushing in disorder about the courtyard, flourishing their arms, picking up billets of wood from the ground—just as though they had gone mad. “To the village! It has run to the village!” shrieked shrilly a peasant-woman in a pointed coronet head-dress of unusual dimensions, thrusting her head through a garret-window. I emerged from the house.
“Where is Tresór?”—said I.—And at that moment I caught sight of my saviour. She was walking away from the gate, limping, all bitten, and covered with blood....
“But what was it, after all?”—I asked the people, as they went circling round the courtyard like crazy folk.
“A mad dog!”—they answered me, “belonging to the Count; it has been roving about here since yesterday.”
We had a neighbour, a Count; he had introduced some very dreadful dogs from over-sea. My knees gave way beneath me; I hastened to the mirror and looked to see whether I had been bitten. No; God be thanked, nothing was visible; only, naturally, my face was all green; but Nimfodóra Semyónovna was lying on the couch, and clucking like a hen. And that was easily to be understood: in the first place, nerves; in the second place, sensibility. But she came to herself, and asked me in a very languid way: was I alive? I told her that I was, and that Tresór was my saviour.
“Akh,”—said she,—“what nobility! And I suppose the mad dog smothered her?”
“No,”—said I,—“it did not smother her, but it wounded her seriously.”
“Akh,”—said she,—“in that case, she must be shot this very moment!”
“Nothing of the sort,”—said I;—“I won’t agree to that; I shall try to cure her.” ...
In the meanwhile, Tresór began to scratch at the door; I started to open it for her.