In the courtyard a big, shaggy, lazy mastiff was shambling about, who, on perceiving a strange unknown four-legged animal (Mr. Kordé had ceased for a time to belong to the category: man) thus approaching him, sidled up to him with incomparable phlegm, and began sniffing at him all round.
Mr. Kordé forthwith collared the neck of the huge dog and began kissing him all over. "Dear friend, faithful old comrade," he cried, "what a long time it is since last we met! What! don't you recognise your old schoolfellow?"—whereupon the big dog in his extreme bewilderment sat down beside the ex-cantor on his haunches and was so astonished that he forgot to bark.
At this Mr. Kordé was completely overcome. Once more he warmly pressed the head of his so unexpectedly recovered friend to his bosom, and then shambled along with him into the courtyard. He pathetically complained to him on the way that he had been chucked out of his employment and was now a fugitive on the face of the earth, whereupon he fell to weeping bitterly and dried his tears with the mastiff's bushy tail.
The poor dog was so utterly taken aback that it could not recover from its astonishment. Once or twice it showed its white teeth and growled at the stranger, but it did not venture to hurt him. No doubt it thought that this strange animal might perhaps be able to bite better than itself.
Thus the two quadrupeds strolled comfortably together right into the courtyard. The dog stopped before his three-cornered kennel which Mr. Kordé interpreted as an invitation on the part of his respectful host for him to go in first, and, accepting the offer in the spirit of true courtesy, and with the deepest emotion, he squeezed himself into the narrow dog-kennel, while the dispossessed bow-wow squatted down at the entrance of his house with the utmost astonishment, unable satisfactorily to explain to himself by what right this strange wild beast usurped his ancestral holding.
Mr. Kordé, however, soon began to snore inside there so terrifically that the scared dog ran out into the middle of the courtyard and fell a-barking with all his might and main, as if he had been offered pitch for supper instead of meat.
As to what followed, it is extremely doubtful whether Mr. Kordé saw it all with his own eyes, or whether it was the dream of a drunken brain impressed so vividly on his memory by his imagination that subsequently he fancied it to be true.
The moon had gone down and there was a great commotion in the courtyard surrounding the forester's hut.
A lamp had been lit in the shelter of a shed, and a group of men was standing round it—pale, sinister figures, putting their heads closely together and listening attentively to a lean, lanky man in a cassock, who was reading a letter to them.