A French officer, more remarkable for his birth and spirit than his wealth, had served the Venetian republic for some years with great valor and fidelity, but had not met with that preferment which he deserved. One day he waited on a nobleman whom he had often solicited in vain, but on whose friendship he had still some reliance. The reception he met with was cool and mortifying; the nobleman turned his back upon the veteran, and left him to find his way to the street through a suite of apartments magnificently furnished.
He passed them lost in thought, till, casting his eyes on a most beautiful sideboard, where a valuable collection of Venetian glass, polished and formed in the highest degree of perfection, stood on a damask cloth as a preparation for a splendid entertainment, he took hold of a corner of the linen, and turning to a faithful mastiff which always went with him, said to the animal, “Here, my poor old friend, you see how these haughty tyrants indulge themselves, and yet how we are treated!” The poor dog looked his master in the face, and gave tokens that he understood him. The master walked on, but the mastiff slackened his pace, and laying hold of the damask cloth with his teeth, gave one hearty pull, and thus brought all the glass on the sideboard in shivers to the ground, thus robbing the unkind nobleman of his favorite exhibition of splendor.
XCIII
ARE BEASTS MERE MACHINES?
A gentleman one day talking with a friend said that beasts were mere machines, and had no sort of reason to direct them; and that when they cried or made a noise, it was only one of the wheels of the clock or machine that made it.
The friend, who was of a different opinion replied, “I have now in my kitchen two dogs who take turns regularly every other morning to get into the wheel. One of them, not liking his employment, hid himself on the day that he should work, so that his companion was forced to mount the wheel in his stead, but crying and wagging his tail, he made sign for those about him to follow him. He at once led them to a garret, where he found the idle dog, drove him out and killed him at once.”
