CHAPTER I

I return to my mother's--The excuse I give concerning my return--The calf's lights--Pyramus and Cartouche--The intelligence of the fox more developed than that of the dog--Death of Cartouche--Pyramus's various gluttonous habits

I packed up my things next day and went. I was not without uneasiness with regard to the way my mother might receive me--my poor mother! her first expression at seeing me was always one of delight, but my leaving Maître Lefèvre's would trouble her. So the nearer I drew to Villers-Cotterets, the slower did my steps become. It generally took me two hours to walk the three and a half leagues between Crespy and Villers-Cotterets, for I used to run the last league; but now the reverse was the case, for the last league took me the longest of all to cover. I returned in shooting costume after my usual fashion. And my dog was hardly three hundred yards away before he smelt home, stopped an instant, lifted up his nose, and set off like an arrow. Five seconds after he had disappeared down the road, I saw my mother appear on the threshold. My courier had preceded me and announced my return. She met me with her usual smile; the whole tenderness of her heart welled up at my approach and shone in her face. I flung myself in her arms.

Oh! what a love is a mother's!--a love always good, always devoted, always faithful; a true diamond lost amongst all the false stones with which youth decks its happiness; a pure and limpid carbuncle, which shines in joy as in sorrow, by night as by day! My mother's first thoughts were nought but joyful ones at seeing me again; then, at last, she asked me how it was I had returned home on Thursday instead of on Saturday, to spend Sunday with her, going back on Monday as usual.

I dared not tell her of the misfortune that had befallen me. I told her that, as business was slack at the office, I had obtained a holiday for several days, which I meant to spend with her.

"But," my mother observed, "I see you are wearing your hunting-coat and breeches."

"Yes, why not?"

"How is it you have nothing in your game-bag?"

It was not indeed customary for me to return with the game-bag empty.

"I was so anxious to see you, dear mother, that instead of shooting, I came the shortest way, by the high road."

I lied. Had I spoken the truth, I should have said, "Alas! dear mother, I was so much taken up with thinking what effect my news would have upon you that I never thought of shooting, though at other times I have forgotten everything for that passion." But had I told her that, I should have had to tell her the news, and I wanted to delay it as long as possible.

An incident freed me from embarrassment and diverted my mother's thoughts for the moment. I heard my dog howl.

I ran to the door. The next house to ours was that of a butcher, called Mauprivez. In the front of the butcher's slab there was a long cross-bar of painted wood, in which at different intervals iron hooks were fixed to hold various specimens of meat. In jumping up at a calfs lights, Pyramus had got hooked like a carp on a fish-hook, and hung suspended. That was why he howled, and, as will readily be imagined, not without cause. I seized hold of him by the body, unhooked him, and he rushed into the stable, his jaws bleeding. If I ever write the history of the dogs that have belonged to me, Pyramus shall have a prominent place by the side of Milord. I may therefore be allowed to leave in suspense the interest my return naturally created, to talk a bit about Pyramus, who, in spite of his name, which indicated that all sorts of love misfortunes were before him, had never had, to my knowledge, any misadventures except gastronomic ones. Pyramus was a large chestnut-coloured dog, of very good French pedigree, who had been given me when quite a puppy, with a fox-cub of the same age, which the keeper who gave him me (it was poor Choron of la Maison-Neuve) had had suckled by the same mother. I often amused myself by watching the different instincts of these two animals develop, as they were placed opposite one another in the yard in two parallel recesses. For the first three or four months an almost brotherly intimacy reigned between Cartouche and Pyramus. I need not mention that Cartouche was the fox and Pyramus the dog. Nor need I mention that the name of Cartouche was given to the fox in allusion to his instincts of stealing and depredation. It was Cartouche who began to declare war on Pyramus, although he was the weaker looking; this declaration of war took place over some bones which were within Cartouche's boundary, but which Pyramus had surreptitiously tried to annex. The first time Pyramus attempted this piracy, Cartouche snarled; the second time, he showed his teeth; the third time, he bit. Cartouche was the more to be excused because he was always on the chain, while Pyramus had his hours of liberty. Cartouche, restrained to a very circumscribed walk, could not therefore, at full length of his chain, do unto Pyramus the evil deeds which Pyramus, abusing his liberty, was guilty of on his side. On account of this captivity, I was able to notice the superior intelligence of the fox over that of the dog. Both were gourmands in the highest degree, with this difference, that Pyramus was more of a glutton and Cartouche more of an epicure. When they both stretched to the full length of their chains, they could reach a distance of nearly four feet, from the opening of their recesses. Add ten inches for the length of Pyramus's head, four inches for Cartouche's pointed nose, and you will arrive at this result, that whilst Pyramus, at the length of his chain, could reach a bone at four feet ten inches from his recess, Cartouche could only perpetrate the same deed four feet four inches from his. Very well, if I placed a bone six feet off,--that is to say, out of the reach of both,--Pyramus had to content himself with stretching his chain with the whole strength of his sturdy shoulders, but not being able to break it, he would stand with fixed bloodshot eyes, his jaws slobbering and open, attempting from time to time, with plaintive whines, to exorcise the distance, or, by desperate efforts, to break his chain. If the bone were not either taken away or given him, he would have gone mad; but he had never succeeded, by any ingenious contrivance, to snatch the prey beyond his reach. It was another matter with Cartouche. His preliminary tactics were the same as those of Pyramus, and consequently equally fruitless. But soon he began to reflect, rubbing a paw on his nose; then, all at once, as though a sudden illumination had come into his mind, he turned himself round, adding the length of his body to the length of his chain, dragged the bone into the circle of his kingdom, by the help of one of his hind paws, turned round again, seized hold of the bone, and entered into his kennel, from which it was not rejected until it was as clean and polished as ivory. Pyramus saw Cartouche perform this trick ten times; he would howl with jealousy as he listened to his comrade's teeth grinding on the bone which he was gnawing; but, I repeat, he never had the intelligence to do the same thing himself, and to use his hind paw as a hook to draw the tit-bit within his reach. Cartouche was of superior intelligence to Pyramus in a thousand other instances such as this, although his tractability was always inferior. But it is common knowledge that with animals as with human beings, the capacity for being trained is not always, nay is scarcely ever, combined with intelligence.

The reader may ask why the injustice was perpetrated of keeping Cartouche always fastened, while Pyramus was allowed his liberty at times. This is why: Pyramus was only a glutton by need, while Cartouche was destructive by instinct. One day he broke his chain, and went from our yard into the farmyard belonging to our neighbour Mauprivez. In less than ten minutes he had strangled seventeen fowls and two cocks. Nineteen cases of homicide: it was impossible to plead extenuating circumstances: he was condemned to death and executed. So Pyramus reigned sole master of the place, which, to his shame be it said, he appreciated greatly. His appetite seemed to increase when he was left alone. This appetite was a defect at home; but, out shooting, it was a vice. Nearly always, the first game I killed under his nose, were it small game, such as partridge, young pheasant or quail, would be lost to me. His big jaws would open, and, with a rapid gulp, the piece of game disappeared down his throat. Very rarely did I arrive in time to perceive, by opening his jaws, the last feathers of the bird's tail disappearing in the depths of his gullet. Then a lash with my horse-whip, vigorously applied on the loins of the guilty sinner, would cure him for the remainder of the chase, and it was seldom he repeated the same fault; but, between one shoot and another, he generally had time to forget the previous punishment, and more expenditure of whipcord was needed. On two other occasions, however, the gluttony of Pyramus turned out badly for him.

One day de Leuven and I were shooting over the marshes of Pondron. It was a place where two harvests were gathered during the year. The first harvest was that of a small thicket of alderwood. The owner of the land, after having cut his branches, stripped the twigs off, sawed it and tied it in bundles. Then he became busy over his second harvest, which was that of hay. They were just reaping this crop. But, as it was luncheon-time, the reapers had rested their scythes, here and there, and were feeding by a small river wherein they could moisten their hard bread. One of them had placed his scythe against one of the heaps of cut wood, about two feet and a half high, placed in cubic metres or half-mètres. I put up a snipe; I fired and killed it, and it fell behind this pile of wood against which the scythe was propped. It was the first thing I had killed that day, consequently it happened to be the perquisite Pyramus was in the habit of appropriating. So, putting two and two together, he had scarcely seen the snipe, stopped in its flight, fall vertically behind the wood pile, before he darted over the stack so as to fall on the spot as soon as it did, without loss of time. As I knew beforehand that it was a head of game lost, I did not hurry myself to see the tail feathers of my snipe in the depths of Pyramus's throat, but, to my great surprise, I saw no more of Pyramus than if he had tumbled down an invisible chasm, hewn out behind the pile of wood. When I had re-loaded my gun, I decided to fathom this mystery. Pyramus had fallen on the far side of the heap of wood, his neck on the point of the scythe; this point had penetrated to the right of the pharynx, behind the neck, and stuck out four inches in front. Poor Pyramus could not stir, and was bleeding' to death: the snipe, intact, was within six inches of his nose. Adolphe and I raised him up, so as to cause him the least possible hurt; we carried him to the river, and we bathed him in deep water; then I made him a compress with my handkerchief, folded in sixteen, which we bound round his neck with Adolphe's silk one. Then, seeing a peasant from Haramont passing, with a donkey carrying two baskets, we put Pyramus in one of the paniers and we had him carried to Haramont, whence next day I took him away in a small conveyance. Pyramus was a week between life and death. For a month he carried his head on one side, like Prince Tuffiakin. Finally, at the end of six weeks, he had regained his elasticity of movement, and appeared to have completely forgotten the terrible catastrophe. But whenever he saw a scythe, he made an immense detour to avoid coming in contact with it. Another day, he returned home, his body as full of holes as a sieve. He had been wandering about the forest alone, watching his opportunity, and he had leapt at the throat of a hare; the hare screamed out: a keeper, who was about a couple of hundred steps away, ran up; but before the keeper could clear the two hundred paces, the hare was half devoured. Now Pyramus, on seeing the approach of the keeper and on hearing his execrations, understood that something alarming would occur between himself and the man in blue clothes. He took to his heels and set off full tear. But, as Friday, of Robinson Crusoe memory remarked, "Small shot ran after me faster than you did!" the keeper's small shot travelled faster than Pyramus, and Pyramus returned home riddled in eight places.

I have already related what happened to him ten minutes after my return. A week later, he came in with a calf's lights in his mouth. A knife was quivering in his side. Behind him came one of the Mauprivez' sons.

"Ah!" he said, "isn't it enough that your beastly Pyramus carries away the contents of our shop, joint by joint, but he must needs carry away my knife too?"

Seeing Pyramus carry off the calfs lights, Mauprivez' boy had hurled at him the knife butchers generally wear at their girdles; but, as the knife went three or four inches into Pyramus's hide, Pyramus had carried off both meat and knife. Mauprivez recovered his implement; but the calfs lights were already devoured. Just when Pyramus's various misdeeds had incurred not merely our individual reprobation, but public reprobation still more, an advantageous occasion offered to get rid of him. But as that occasion was invested in my eyes with all the semblance of a miracle, I must be permitted to relate that miracle in its proper time and place, and not to anticipate it here.

Let us, for the moment, occupy ourselves over the unexpected return of the prodigal son to the maternal roof--a return from which Pyramus and Cartouche have incidentally diverted our attention.