"Vous voyez ca?"
"Point d'excuse!"
"It is scandalous, it is shameful, it is abominable, M'sieur," shouted the Commissionaire, "the way you have acted! Twenty-four hours you hide the dead body of a dog in your bedroom! You hope to escape the eye of the law! You would bring disgrace on the gendarmerie, on the municipality of Paris! You laugh at our regulations, M'sieur, you laugh!" and he brandished the paper violently. "But you will find the authority of France is greater than you! There are cells, M'sieur, there are courts, there are judges for your education!!!"
Matters were apparently growing serious for me. I had evidently offended them all desperately somehow. "You go out in the morning," he continued, furiously, "and you do not slink back here till it is dark! You are a coward, M'sieur! a coward!"
No Englishman likes hearing himself abused, and my own anger now was considerably roused. But still, in my way about life, I have found the inestimable value of conciliation. It saves one such an infinity of trouble. I suppose I lean naturally towards it. At any rate, I always feel this—that if you have not the power on your side it is undignified to assume that which you cannot enforce, and if you have the power you can then afford to be civil.
A pleasant manner has never once failed me in bringing about an effect which is highly convenient to oneself, and in the long run it spares one's vanity considerably. There is hardly any human being, however aggressive he may be at first, that does not melt into respect before an imperturbable civility. I felt in this case, too, that I was probably in the wrong from their point of view. It was the question of another country's ways, and I have a lenient feeling towards the epichortyon. So, annoyed and irritated as I was, I checked my own feelings and said,—
"I think it is altogether a misunderstanding! I have no intention of breaking any regulations. I was not aware that a dog's death would be a matter where the law would interfere."
The fury on the purple face opposite me subsided somewhat.
"Is it then possible," he said, more quietly, "that you are in ignorance of our rule, that, when any animal dies in a private dwelling-house, the fact shall be notified within twelve hours to the police, in order that the dead body may be immediately removed?"
All eyes fixed upon me with breathless uncertainty.