Among the sojourners at the Grand Hôtel Victoria, Mentone, in the year 1872, was the Archduchess Marie Régnier, who, during her three months’ stay there, took such a liking to mine host’s handsome dog Pietrino, that she begged him of M. Milandi, and carried her prize with her to Vienna. In less than a fortnight after reaching that capital, Pietrino was back in his old quarters again, having travelled eight hundred miles across strange countries, over mountains, through towns and villages, only to die at his master’s feet five days after his coming home. He was buried among the rose-bushes in the grounds so familiar to him, his resting place marked by a marble column, inscribed, ‘Ci-gît Pietrino, Ami Fidèle. 1872.’
Exactly a hundred years before that, a dog died at Minorca out of sheer grief for the loss of his master, who, ordered home to England, did not care to encumber himself with his canine friend. Honouring the deserted animal’s unworthily placed affection, his owner’s brother-officers saw him decently interred, and erected a stone to his memory, bearing an epitaph written by Lieutenant Erskine, ending:
His life was shortened by no slothful ease,
Vice-begot care, or folly-bred disease.
Forsook by him he valued more than life,
His generous nature sank beneath the strife.
Left by his master on a foreign shore,
New masters offered—but he owned no more;
The ocean oft with seeming sorrow eyed,
And pierced by man’s ingratitude, he died.