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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Friend the Dog
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Illustrator: Cecil Alden
+
+Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+Release Date: April 20, 2006 [EBook #18214]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR FRIEND THE DOG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+OUR FRIEND THE DOG
+
+BY
+MAURICE MAETERLINCK
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF THE BEE," ETC.
+
+TRANSLATED BY
+ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+CECIL ALDEN
+
+
+NEW YORK
+DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
+
+1913
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE CENTURY CO.
+COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
+
+Published, October, 1913
+
+
+
+
+OUR FRIEND THE DOG
+
+I
+
+
+I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just
+completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His
+intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind,
+then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.
+
+The friend who presented me with him had given him, perhaps by
+antiphrasis, the startling name of Pelléas. Why rechristen him? For how
+can a poor dog, loving, devoted, faithful, disgrace the name of a man or
+an imaginary hero?
+
+Pelléas had a great bulging, powerful forehead, like that of Socrates or
+Verlaine; and, under a little black nose, blunt as a churlish assent, a
+pair of large hanging and symmetrical chops, which made his head a sort
+of massive, obstinate, pensive and three-cornered menace. He was
+beautiful after the manner of a beautiful, natural monster that has
+complied strictly with the laws of its species. And what a smile of
+attentive obligingness, of incorruptible innocence, of affectionate
+submission, of boundless gratitude and total self-abandonment lit up, at
+the least caress, that adorable mask of ugliness! Whence exactly did
+that smile emanate? From the ingenuous and melting eyes? From the ears
+pricked up to catch the words of man? From the forehead that unwrinkled
+to appreciate and love, or from the stump of a tail that wriggled at the
+other end to testify to the intimate and impassioned joy that filled his
+small being, happy once more to encounter the hand or the glance of the
+god to whom he surrendered himself?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Pelléas was born in Paris, and I had taken him to the country. His bonny
+fat paws, shapeless and not yet stiffened, carried slackly through the
+unexplored pathways of his new existence his huge and serious head,
+flat-nosed and, as it were, rendered heavy with thought.
+
+For this thankless and rather sad head, like that of an overworked
+child, was beginning the overwhelming work that oppresses every brain at
+the start of life. He had, in less than five or six weeks, to get into
+his mind, taking shape within it, an image and a satisfactory
+conception of the universe. Man, aided by all the knowledge of his own
+elders and his brothers, takes thirty or forty years to outline that
+conception, but the humble dog has to unravel it for himself in a few
+days: and yet, in the eyes of a god, who should know all things, would
+it not have the same weight and the same value as our own?
+
+It was a question, then, of studying the ground, which can be scratched
+and dug up and which sometimes reveals surprising things; of casting at
+the sky, which is uninteresting, for there is nothing there to eat, one
+glance that does away with it for good and all; of discovering the
+grass, the admirable and green grass, the springy and cool grass, a
+field for races and sports, a friendly and boundless bed, in which lies
+hidden the good and wholesome couch-grass. It was a question, also, of
+taking promiscuously a thousand urgent and curious observations. It was
+necessary, for instance, with no other guide than pain, to learn to
+calculate the height of objects from the top of which you can jump into
+space; to convince yourself that it is vain to pursue birds who fly away
+and that you are unable to clamber up trees after the cats who defy you
+there; to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to
+sleep and the patches of shade in which you shiver; to remark with
+stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses, that water
+is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous, while fire is beneficent at a
+distance, but terrible when you come too near; to observe that the
+meadows, the farm-yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant
+creatures with threatening horns, creatures good-natured, perhaps, and,
+at any rate, silent, creatures who allow you to sniff at them a little
+curiously without taking offence, but who keep their real thoughts to
+themselves. It was necessary to learn, as the result of painful and
+humiliating experiment, that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's
+laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods; to recognize that
+the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine
+dwelling, although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the
+cook, who is a considerable, but jealous power; to learn that doors are
+important and capricious volitions, which sometimes lead to felicity,
+but which most often, hermetically closed, mute and stern, haughty and
+heartless, remain deaf to all entreaties; to admit, once and for all,
+that the essential good things of life, the indisputable blessings,
+generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always
+inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired
+indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to
+yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely
+to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose
+the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+And then, what is one to think of the table on which so many things
+happen that cannot be guessed; of the derisive chairs on which one is
+forbidden to sleep; of the plates and dishes that are empty by the
+time that one can get at them; of the lamp that drives away the dark?...
+How many orders, dangers, prohibitions, problems, enigmas has one not to
+classify in one's overburdened memory!... And how to reconcile all this
+with other laws, other enigmas, wider and more imperious, which one
+bears within one's self, within one's instinct, which spring up and
+develop from one hour to the other, which come from the depths of time
+and the race, invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves and suddenly
+assert themselves more irresistibly and more powerfully than pain, the
+word of the master himself, or the fear of death?
+
+Thus, for instance, to quote only one example, when the hour of sleep
+has struck for men, you have retired to your hole, surrounded by the
+darkness, the silence and the formidable solitude of the night. All is
+sleep in the master's house. You feel yourself very small and weak in
+the presence of the mystery. You know that the gloom is peopled with
+foes who hover and lie in wait. You suspect the trees, the passing wind
+and the moonbeams. You would like to hide, to suppress yourself by
+holding your breath. But still the watch must be kept; you must, at the
+least sound, issue from your retreat, face the invisible and bluntly
+disturb the imposing silence of the earth, at the risk of bringing down
+the whispering evil or crime upon yourself alone. Whoever the enemy be,
+even if he be man, that is to say, the very brother of the god whom it
+is your business to defend, you must attack him blindly, fly at his
+throat, fasten your perhaps sacrilegious teeth into human flesh,
+disregard the spell of a hand and voice similar to those of your master,
+never be silent, never attempt to escape, never allow yourself to be
+tempted or bribed and, lost in the night without help, prolong the
+heroic alarm to your last breath.
+
+There is the great ancestral duty, the essential duty, stronger than
+death, which not even man's will and anger are able to check. All our
+humble history, linked with that of the dog in our first struggles
+against every breathing thing, tends to prevent his forgetting it. And
+when, in our safer dwelling-places of to-day, we happen to punish him
+for his untimely zeal, he throws us a glance of astonished reproach, as
+though to point out to us that we are in the wrong and that, if we lose
+sight of the main clause in the treaty of alliance which he made with us
+at the time when we lived in caves, forests and fens, he continues
+faithful to it in spite of us and remains nearer to the eternal truth of
+life, which is full of snares and hostile forces.
+
+But how much care and study are needed to succeed in fulfilling this
+duty! And how complicated it has become since the days of the silent
+caverns and the great deserted lakes! It was all so simple, then, so
+easy and so clear. The lonely hollow opened upon the side of the hill,
+and all that approached, all that moved on the horizon of the plains or
+woods, was the unmistakable enemy.... But to-day you can no longer
+tell.... You have to acquaint yourself with a civilization of which you
+disapprove, to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible
+things.... Thus, it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no
+longer belongs to the master, that his property conforms to
+unintelligible limits.... It becomes necessary, therefore, first of all
+to know exactly where the sacred domain begins and ends. Whom are you to
+suffer, whom to stop?... There is the road by which every one, even the
+poor, has the right to pass. Why? You do not know; it is a fact which
+you deplore, but which you are bound to accept. Fortunately, on the
+other hand, here is the fair path which none may tread. This path is
+faithful to the sound traditions; it is not to be lost sight of; for by
+it enter into your daily existence the difficult problems of life.
+
+Would you have an example? You are sleeping peacefully in a ray of the
+sun that covers the threshold of the kitchen with pearls. The
+earthenware pots are amusing themselves by elbowing and nudging one
+another on the edge of the shelves trimmed with paper lace-work. The
+copper stewpans play at scattering spots of light over the smooth white
+walls. The motherly stove hums a soft tune and dandles three saucepans
+blissfully dancing; and, from the little hole that lights up its inside,
+defies the good dog who cannot approach, by constantly putting out at
+him its fiery tongue. The clock, bored in its oak case, before striking
+the august hour of meal time, swings its great gilt navel to and fro;
+and the cunning flies tease your ears. On the glittering table lie a
+chicken, a hare, three partridges, besides other things which are called
+fruits--peaches, melons, grapes--and which are all good for nothing. The
+cook guts a big silver fish and throws the entrails (instead of giving
+them to you!) into the dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin! Inexhaustible
+treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall
+have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does
+not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to
+rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life
+would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all the
+orders of the pantry, the cellar and the dining-room. Luckily, he is
+absent-minded and does not long remember the instructions which he
+lavishes. He is easily deceived. You achieve your ends and do as you
+please, provided you have the patience to await the hour. You are
+subject to man, and he is the one god; but you none the less have your
+own personal, exact and imperturbable morality, which proclaims aloud
+that illicit acts become most lawful through the very fact that they
+are performed without the master's knowledge. Therefore, let us close
+the watchful eye that has seen. Let us pretend to sleep and to dream of
+the moon....
+
+Hark! A gentle tapping at the blue window that looks out on the garden!
+What is it? Nothing; a bough of hawthorn that has come to see what we
+are doing in the cool kitchen. Trees are inquisitive and often excited;
+but they do not count, one has nothing to say to them, they are
+irresponsible, they obey the wind, which has no principles.... But what
+is that? I hear steps!... Up, ears open; nose on the alert!... It is the
+baker coming up to the rails, while the postman is opening a little gate
+in the hedge of lime-trees. They are friends; it is well; they bring
+something: you can greet them and wag your tail discreetly twice or
+thrice, with a patronizing smile....
+
+Another alarm! What is it now? A carriage pulls up in front of the
+steps. The problem is a complex one. Before all, it is of consequence to
+heap copious insults on the horses, great, proud beasts, who make no
+reply. Meantime, you examine out of the corner of your eye the persons
+alighting. They are well-clad and seem full of confidence. They are
+probably going to sit at the table of the gods. The proper thing is to
+bark without acrimony, with a shade of respect, so as to show that you
+are doing your duty, but that you are doing it with intelligence.
+Nevertheless, you cherish a lurking suspicion and, behind the guests'
+backs, stealthily, you sniff the air persistently and in a knowing way,
+in order to discern any hidden intentions.
+
+But halting footsteps resound outside the kitchen. This time it is the
+poor man dragging his crutch, the unmistakable enemy, the hereditary
+enemy, the direct descendant of him who roamed outside the bone-cramped
+cave which you suddenly see again in your racial memory. Drunk with
+indignation, your bark broken, your teeth multiplied with hatred and
+rage, you are about to seize their reconcilable adversary by the
+breeches, when the cook, armed with her broom, the ancillary and
+forsworn sceptre, comes to protect the traitor, and you are obliged to
+go back to your hole, where, with eyes filled with impotent and
+slanting flames, you growl out frightful, but futile curses, thinking
+within yourself that this is the end of all things, and that the human
+species has lost its notion of justice and injustice....
+
+Is that all? Not yet; for the smallest life is made up of innumerous
+duties, and it is a long work to organize a happy existence upon the
+borderland of two such different worlds as the world of beasts and the
+world of men. How should we fare if we had to serve, while remaining
+within our own sphere, a divinity, not an imaginary one, like to
+ourselves, because the offspring of our own brain, but a god actually
+visible, ever present, ever active and as foreign, as superior to our
+being as we are to the dog?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We now, to return to Pelléas, know pretty well what to do and how to
+behave on the master's premises. But the world does not end at the
+house-door, and, beyond the walls and beyond the hedge, there is a
+universe of which one has not the custody, where one is no longer at
+home, where relations are changed. How are we to stand in the street, in
+the fields, in the market-place, in the shops? In consequence of
+difficult and delicate observations, we understand that we must take no
+notice of passers-by; obey no calls but the master's; be polite, with
+indifference, to strangers who pet us. Next, we must conscientiously
+fulfil certain obligations of mysterious courtesy toward our brothers
+the other dogs; respect chickens and ducks; not appear to remark the
+cakes at the pastry-cook's, which spread themselves insolently within
+reach of the tongue; show to the cats, who, on the steps of the houses,
+provoke us by hideous grimaces, a silent contempt, but one that will not
+forget; and remember that it is lawful and even commendable to chase and
+strangle mice, rats, wild rabbits and, generally speaking, all animals
+(we learn to know them by secret marks) that have not yet made their
+peace with mankind.
+
+All this and so much more!... Was it surprising that Pelléas often
+appeared pensive in the face of those numberless problems, and that his
+humble and gentle look was often so profound and grave, laden with cares
+and full of unreadable questions?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Alas, he did not have time to finish the long and heavy task which
+nature lays upon the instinct that rises in order to approach a brighter
+region.... An ill of a mysterious character, which seems specially to
+punish the only animal that succeeds in leaving the circle in which it
+is born; an indefinite ill that carries off hundreds of intelligent
+little dogs, came to put an end to the destiny and the happy education
+of Pelléas. And now all those efforts to achieve a little more light;
+all that ardour in loving, that courage in understanding; all that
+affectionate gaiety and innocent fawning; all those kind and devoted
+looks, which turned to man to ask for his assistance against unjust
+death; all those flickering gleams which came from the profound abyss of
+a world that is no longer ours; all those nearly human little habits lie
+sadly in the cold ground, under a flowering elder-tree, in a corner of
+the garden.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it if he
+considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole
+exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in
+order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable,
+that separate the species! We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance
+planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one,
+excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. A few creatures fear
+us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of
+plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite
+of themselves. They simply endure our laws and our yoke. They are
+impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently
+rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray
+us and return to their former wild and mischievous liberty. The rose
+and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach like the birds.
+
+Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only
+through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven
+horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive
+and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do
+nor where to go, but who nevertheless, under the cudgel and the
+pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and
+the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for
+centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted
+sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful
+to the poultry-yard because she finds more maize and wheat there than in
+the neighbouring forest. I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are
+nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat,
+whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in
+our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all
+the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.
+They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are
+unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness,
+our joy, our smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so
+soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is
+with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still
+hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first
+time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a
+momentary and useless accident of the pasture.
+
+For thousands of years, they have been living at our side, as foreign
+to our thoughts, our affections, our habits as though the least
+fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe. In
+the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures,
+we have succeeded only, by dint of patience, in making them take two or
+three illusory steps. And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward
+us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons
+wherewith to conquer us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty
+vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the
+maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun
+the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me
+with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye,
+as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me
+without a thought.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Now, in this indifference and this total want of comprehension in which
+everything that surrounds us lives; in this incommunicable world, where
+everything has its object hermetically contained within itself, where
+every destiny is self-circumscribed, where there exist among the
+creatures no other relations than those of executioners and victims,
+eaters and eaten, where nothing is able to leave its steel-bound
+sphere, where death alone establishes cruel relations of cause and
+effect between neighbouring lives, where not the smallest sympathy has
+ever made a conscious leap from one species to another, one animal
+alone, among all that breathes upon the earth, has succeeded in breaking
+through the prophetic circle, in escaping from itself to come bounding
+toward us, definitely to cross the enormous zone of darkness, ice and
+silence that isolates each category of existence in nature's
+unintelligible plan. This animal, our good familiar dog, simple and
+unsurprising as may to-day appear to us what he has done, in thus
+perceptibly drawing nearer to a world in which he was not born and for
+which he was not destined, has nevertheless performed one of the most
+unusual and improbable acts that we can find in the general history of
+life. When was this recognition of man by beast, this extraordinary
+passage from darkness to light, effected? Did we seek out the poodle,
+the collie, or the mastiff from among the wolves and the jackals, or did
+he come spontaneously to us? We cannot tell. So far as our human annals
+stretch, he is at our side, as at present; but what are human annals in
+comparison with the times of which we have no witness? The fact remains
+that he is there in our houses, as ancient, as rightly placed, as
+perfectly adapted to our habits as though he had appeared on this
+earth, such as he now is, at the same time as ourselves. We have not to
+gain his confidence or his friendship: he is born our friend; while his
+eyes are still closed, already he believes in us: even before his birth,
+he has given himself to man. But the word "friend" does not exactly
+depict his affectionate worship. He loves us and reveres us as though we
+had drawn him out of nothing. He is, before all, our creature full of
+gratitude and more devoted than the apple of our eye. He is our intimate
+and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing repels,
+whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair. He has solved, in an
+admirable and touching manner, the terrifying problem which human wisdom
+would have to solve if a divine race came to occupy our globe. He has
+loyally, religiously, irrevocably recognized man's superiority and has
+surrendered himself to him body and soul, without after-thought,
+without any intention to go back, reserving of his independence, his
+instinct and his character only the small part indispensable to the
+continuation of the life prescribed by nature. With an unquestioning
+certainty, an unconstraint and a simplicity that surprise us a little,
+deeming us better and more powerful than all that exists, he betrays,
+for our benefit, the whole of the animal kingdom to which he belongs
+and, without scruple, denies his race, his kin, his mother and his
+young.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But he loves us not only in his consciousness and his intelligence: the
+very instinct of his race, the entire unconsciousness of his species, it
+appears, think only of us, dream only of being useful to us. To serve us
+better, to adapt himself better to our different needs, he has adopted
+every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties, the
+aptitudes which he places at our disposal. Is he to aid us in the
+pursuit of game in the plains? His legs lengthen inordinately, his
+muzzle tapers, his lungs widen, he becomes swifter than the deer. Does
+our prey hide under wood? The docile genius of the species, forestalling
+our desires, presents us with the basset, a sort of almost footless
+serpent, which steals into the closest thickets. Do we ask that he
+should drive our flocks? The same compliant genius grants him the
+requisite size, intelligence, energy and vigilance. Do we intend him to
+watch and defend our house? His head becomes round and monstrous, in
+order that his jaws may be more powerful, more formidable and more
+tenacious. Are we taking him to the south? His hair grows shorter and
+lighter, so that he may faithfully accompany us under the rays of a
+hotter sun. Are we going up to the north? His feet grow larger, the
+better to tread the snow; his fur thickens, in order that the cold may
+not compel him to abandon us. Is he intended only for us to play with,
+to amuse the leisure of our eyes, to adorn or enliven the home? He
+clothes himself in a sovereign grace and elegance, he makes himself
+smaller than a doll to sleep on our knees by the fireside, or even
+consents, should our fancy demand it, to appear a little ridiculous to
+please us.
+
+You shall not find, in nature's immense crucible, a single living being
+that has shown a like suppleness, a similar abundance of forms, the
+same prodigious faculty of accommodation to our wishes. This is because,
+in the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses
+that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not
+one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence
+of man.
+
+It will, perhaps, be said that we have been able to transform almost as
+profoundly some of our domestic animals: our hens, our pigeons, our
+ducks, our cats, our horses, our rabbits, for instance. Yes, perhaps;
+although such transformations are not comparable with those undergone by
+the dog and although the kind of service which these animals render us
+remains, so to speak, invariable. In any case, whether this impression
+be purely imaginary or correspond with a reality, it does not appear
+that we feel in these transformations the same unfailing and preventing
+good will, the same sagacious and exclusive love. For the rest, it is
+quite possible that the dog, or rather the inaccessible genius of his
+race, troubles scarcely at all about us and that we have merely known
+how to make use of various aptitudes offered by the abundant chances of
+life. It matters not: as we know nothing of the substance of things, we
+must needs cling to appearances; and it is sweet to establish that, at
+least in appearance, there is on the planet where, like unacknowledged
+kings, we live in solitary state, a being that loves us.
+
+However the case may stand with these appearances, it is none the less
+certain that, in the aggregate of intelligent creatures that have
+rights, duties, a mission and a destiny, the dog is a really privileged
+animal. He occupies in this world a pre-eminent position enviable among
+all. He is the only living being that has found and recognizes an
+indubitable, tangible, unexceptionable and definite god. He knows to
+what to devote the best part of himself. He knows to whom above him to
+give himself. He has not to seek for a perfect, superior and infinite
+power in the darkness, amid successive lies, hypotheses and dreams. That
+power is there, before him, and he moves in its light. He knows the
+supreme duties which we all do not know. He has a morality which
+surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself and which he can
+practise without scruple and without fear. He possesses truth in its
+fulness. He has a certain and infinite ideal.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+And it was thus that, the other day, before his illness, I saw my little
+Pelléas sitting at the foot of my writing-table, his tail carefully
+folded under his paws, his head a little on one side, the better to
+question me, at once attentive and tranquil, as a saint should be in the
+presence of God. He was happy with the happiness which we, perhaps,
+shall never know, since it sprang from the smile and the approval of a
+life incomparably higher than his own. He was there, studying, drinking
+in all my looks; and he replied to them gravely, as from equal to equal,
+to inform me, no doubt, that, at least through the eyes the most
+immaterial organ that transformed into affectionate intelligence the
+light which we enjoyed, he knew that he was saying to me all that love
+should say. And, when I saw him thus, young, ardent and believing,
+bringing me, in some wise, from the depths of unwearied nature, quite
+fresh news of life and trusting and wonderstruck, as though he had been
+the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we
+were still in the first days of the world's existence, I envied the
+gladness of his certainty, compared it with the destiny of man, still
+plunging on every side into darkness, and said to myself that the dog
+who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+    </title>
+    <link rel='coverpage' href='images/cover.jpg' />
+    <style type="text/css">
+    body              {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
+    p                 {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .figcenter        {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+    .tnote            {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
+                       padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em;
+                       padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;
+                       font-size: 90%}
+    ins               {text-decoration:none;  border-bottom: thin dotted gray;}
+    hr                {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;
+                       margin-left: auto;  margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+    hr.full           {width:100%; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+    hr.major          {width:75%; margin-top:2em; margin-bottom: 2em;}
+    hr.minor          {width:30%; margin-top:0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
+    table             {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+    .pagenum          {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: x-small; text-align: right; }
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Friend the Dog
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Illustrator: Cecil Alden
+
+Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+Release Date: April 20, 2006 [EBook #18214]
+              [Most recently updated: June 7, 2020]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR FRIEND THE DOG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-002.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<table width="400" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Title Page" border="1">
+  <col style="width:80%;" />
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+     <p style="margin-top: 5em"></p>
+      <span style="font-size: 200%">OUR FRIEND<br />THE DOG</span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 90%;">BY</span><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 110%;">MAURICE MAETERLINCK</span><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 70%; font-variant: small-caps;">
+        Author of "THE LIFE OF THE BEE," etc.
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 80%; font-variant: small-caps;">
+        Translated by<br />ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTTOS
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 70%; font-variant: small-caps;">
+        Illustrated by<br />CECIL ALDEN
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="text-align:center; font-size: 100%;">
+        NEW YORK<br />DODD, MEAD &amp; COMPANY<br />1913
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<p style="text-align: center; font-size: 85%; font-variant: small-caps">
+Copyright, 1903, by<br />
+The Century Co.<br />
+<br />
+Copyright, 1904, by<br />
+Dodd, Mead &amp; Company<br />
+<br />
+Published, October, 1913
+</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+<h2>OUR FRIEND THE DOG</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p>I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just
+completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His
+intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind,
+then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.</p>
+
+<p>The friend who presented me with him had given him, perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> by
+antiphrasis, the startling name of Pell&eacute;as. Why rechristen him? For how
+can a poor dog, loving, devoted, faithful, disgrace the name of a man or
+an imaginary hero?</p>
+
+<p>Pell&eacute;as had a great bulging, powerful forehead, like that of Socrates or
+Verlaine; and, under a little black nose, blunt as a churlish assent, a
+pair of large hanging and symmetrical chops, which made his head a sort
+of massive, obstinate, pensive and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> three-cornered menace. He was
+beautiful after the manner of a beautiful, natural monster that has
+complied strictly with the laws of its species. And what a smile of
+attentive obligingness, of incorruptible innocence, of affectionate
+submission, of boundless gratitude and total self-abandonment lit up, at
+the least caress, that adorable mask of ugliness! Whence exactly did
+that smile emanate? From the ingenuous and melting eyes? From the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> ears
+pricked up to catch the words of man? From the forehead that unwrinkled
+to appreciate and love, or from the stump of a tail that wriggled at the
+other end to testify to the intimate and impassioned joy that filled his
+small being, happy once more to encounter the hand or the glance of the
+god to whom he surrendered himself?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-010.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Pell&eacute;as was born in Paris, and I had taken him to the country. His bonny
+fat paws, shapeless <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>and not yet stiffened, carried slackly through the
+unexplored pathways of his new existence his huge and serious head,
+flat-nosed and, as it were, rendered heavy with thought.</p>
+
+<p>For this thankless and rather sad head, like that of an overworked
+child, was beginning the overwhelming work that oppresses every brain at
+the start of life. He had, in less than five or six weeks, to get into
+his mind, taking shape within it, an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> image and a satisfactory
+conception of the universe. Man, aided by all the knowledge of his own
+elders and his brothers, takes thirty or forty years to outline that
+conception, but the humble dog has to unravel it for himself in a few
+days: and yet, in the eyes of a god, who should know all things, would
+it not have the same weight and the same value as our own?</p>
+
+<p>It was a question, then, of studying the ground, which can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> be scratched
+and dug up and which sometimes reveals surprising things; of casting at
+the sky, which is uninteresting, for there is nothing there to eat, one
+glance that does away with it for good and all; of discovering the
+grass, the admirable and green grass, the springy and cool grass, a
+field for races and sports, a friendly and boundless bed, in which lies
+hidden the good and wholesome couch-grass. It was a question, also, of
+taking promiscuously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> a thousand urgent and curious observations. It was
+necessary, for instance, with no other guide than pain, to learn to
+calculate the height of objects from the top of which you can jump into
+space; to convince yourself that it is vain to pursue birds who fly away
+and that you are unable to clamber up trees after the cats who defy you
+there; to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to
+sleep and the patches of shade<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> in which you shiver; to remark with
+stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses, that water
+is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous, while fire is beneficent at a
+distance, but terrible when you come too near; to observe that the
+meadows, the farm-yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant
+creatures with threatening horns, creatures good-natured, perhaps, and,
+at any rate, silent, creatures who allow you to sniff at them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> a little
+curiously without taking offence, but who keep their real thoughts to
+themselves. It was necessary to learn, as the result of painful and
+humiliating experiment, that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's
+laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods; to recognize that
+the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine
+dwelling, although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the
+cook, who is a considerable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> but jealous power; to learn that doors are
+important and capricious volitions, which sometimes lead to felicity,
+but which most often, hermetically closed, mute and stern, haughty and
+heartless, remain deaf to all entreaties; to admit, once and for all,
+that the essential good things of life, the indisputable blessings,
+generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always
+inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired
+indifference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to
+yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely
+to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose
+the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-019.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>And then, what is one to think of the table on which so many things
+happen that cannot be guessed; of the derisive chairs on which one is
+forbidden to sleep; of the plates and dishes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>that are empty by the
+time that one can get at them; of the lamp that drives away the dark?...
+How many orders, dangers, prohibitions, problems, enigmas has one not to
+classify in one's overburdened memory!... And how to reconcile all this
+with other laws, other enigmas, wider and more imperious, which one
+bears within one's self, within one's instinct, which spring up and
+develop from one hour to the other, which come from the depths of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> time
+and the race, invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves and suddenly
+assert themselves more irresistibly and more powerfully than pain, the
+word of the master himself, or the fear of death?</p>
+
+<p>Thus, for instance, to quote only one example, when the hour of sleep
+has struck for men, you have retired to your hole, surrounded by the
+darkness, the silence and the formidable solitude of the night. All is
+sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> in the master's house. You feel yourself very small and weak in
+the presence of the mystery. You know that the gloom is peopled with
+foes who hover and lie in wait. You suspect the trees, the passing wind
+and the moonbeams. You would like to hide, to suppress yourself by
+holding your breath. But still the watch must be kept; you must, at the
+least sound, issue from your retreat, face the invisible and bluntly
+disturb the imposing silence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> earth, at the risk of bringing down
+the whispering evil or crime upon yourself alone. Whoever the enemy be,
+even if he be man, that is to say, the very brother of the god whom it
+is your business to defend, you must attack him blindly, fly at his
+throat, fasten your perhaps sacrilegious teeth into human flesh,
+disregard the spell of a hand and voice similar to those of your master,
+never be silent, never attempt to escape, never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> allow yourself to be
+tempted or bribed and, lost in the night without help, prolong the
+heroic alarm to your last breath.</p>
+
+<p>There is the great ancestral duty, the essential duty, stronger than
+death, which not even man's will and anger are able to check. All our
+humble history, linked with that of the dog in our first struggles
+against every breathing thing, tends to prevent his forgetting it. And
+when, in our safer dwelling-places of to-day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> we happen to punish him
+for his untimely zeal, he throws us a glance of astonished reproach, as
+though to point out to us that we are in the wrong and that, if we lose
+sight of the main clause in the treaty of alliance which he made with us
+at the time when we lived in caves, forests and fens, he continues
+faithful to it in spite of us and remains nearer to the eternal truth of
+life, which is full of snares and hostile forces.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But how much care and study are needed to succeed in fulfilling this
+duty! And how complicated it has become since the days of the silent
+caverns and the great deserted lakes! It was all so simple, then, so
+easy and so clear. The lonely hollow opened upon the side of the hill,
+and all that approached, all that moved on the horizon of the plains or
+woods, was the unmistakable enemy.... But to-day you can no longer
+tell....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> You have to acquaint yourself with a civilization of which you
+disapprove, to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible
+things.... Thus, it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no
+longer belongs to the master, that his property conforms to
+unintelligible limits.... It becomes necessary, therefore, first of all
+to know exactly where the sacred domain begins and ends. Whom are you to
+suffer, whom to stop?... There is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the road by which every one, even the
+poor, has the right to pass. Why? You do not know; it is a fact which
+you deplore, but which you are bound to accept. Fortunately, on the
+other hand, here is the fair path which none may tread. This path is
+faithful to the sound traditions; it is not to be lost sight of; for by
+it enter into your daily existence the difficult problems of life.</p>
+
+<p>Would you have an example? You are sleeping peacefully in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> a ray of the
+sun that covers the threshold of the kitchen with pearls. The
+earthenware pots are amusing themselves by elbowing and nudging one
+another on the edge of the shelves trimmed with paper lace-work. The
+copper stewpans play at scattering spots of light over the smooth white
+walls. The motherly stove hums a soft tune and dandles three saucepans
+blissfully dancing; and, from the little hole that lights up its inside,
+defies the good dog<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> who cannot approach, by constantly putting out at
+him its fiery tongue. The clock, bored in its oak case, before striking
+the august hour of meal time, swings its great gilt navel to and fro;
+and the cunning flies tease your ears. On the glittering table lie a
+chicken, a hare, three partridges, besides other things which are called
+fruits&mdash;peaches, melons, grapes&mdash;and which are all good for nothing. The
+cook guts a big silver fish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and throws the entrails (instead of giving
+them to you!) into the dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin! Inexhaustible
+treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall
+have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does
+not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to
+rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life
+would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> the
+orders of the pantry, the cellar and the dining-room. Luckily, he is
+absent-minded and does not long remember the instructions which he
+lavishes. He is easily deceived. You achieve your ends and do as you
+please, provided you have the patience to await the hour. You are
+subject to man, and he is the one god; but you none the less have your
+own personal, exact and imperturbable morality, which proclaims aloud
+that illicit acts become most lawful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> through the very fact that they
+are performed without the master's knowledge. Therefore, let us close
+the watchful eye that has seen. Let us pretend to sleep and to dream of
+the moon....</p>
+
+<p>Hark! A gentle tapping at the blue window that looks out on the garden!
+What is it? Nothing; a bough of hawthorn that has come to see what we
+are doing in the cool kitchen. Trees are inquisitive and often excited;
+but they do not count, one has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> nothing to say to them, they are
+irresponsible, they obey the wind, which has no principles.... But what
+is that? I hear steps!... Up, ears open; nose on the alert!... It is the
+baker coming up to the rails, while the postman is opening a little gate
+in the hedge of lime-trees. They are friends; it is well; they bring
+something: you can greet them and wag your tail discreetly twice or
+thrice, with a patronizing smile....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another alarm! What is it now? A carriage pulls up in front of the
+steps. The problem is a complex one. Before all, it is of consequence to
+heap copious insults on the horses, great, proud beasts, who make no
+reply. Meantime, you examine out of the corner of your eye the persons
+alighting. They are well-clad and seem full of confidence. They are
+probably going to sit at the table of the gods. The proper thing is to
+bark without acrimony, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> shade of respect, so as to show that you
+are doing your duty, but that you are doing it with intelligence.
+Nevertheless, you cherish a lurking suspicion and, behind the guests'
+backs, stealthily, you sniff the air persistently and in a knowing way,
+in order to discern any hidden intentions.</p>
+
+<p>But halting footsteps resound outside the kitchen. This time it is the
+poor man dragging his crutch, the unmistakable enemy, the hereditary
+enemy, the direct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> descendant of him who roamed outside the bone-cramped
+cave which you suddenly see again in your racial memory. Drunk with
+indignation, your bark broken, your teeth multiplied with hatred and
+rage, you are about to seize their reconcilable adversary by the
+breeches, when the cook, armed with her broom, the ancillary and
+forsworn sceptre, comes to protect the traitor, and you are obliged to
+go back to your hole, where, with eyes filled with impotent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> and
+slanting flames, you growl out frightful, but futile curses, thinking
+within yourself that this is the end of all things, and that the human
+species has lost its notion of justice and injustice....</p>
+
+<p>Is that all? Not yet; for the smallest life is made up of innumerous
+duties, and it is a long work to organize a happy existence upon the
+borderland of two such different worlds as the world of beasts and the
+world of men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> How should we fare if we had to serve, while remaining
+within our own sphere, a divinity, not an imaginary one, like to
+ourselves, because the offspring of our own brain, but a god actually
+visible, ever present, ever active and as foreign, as superior to our
+being as we are to the dog?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-040.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>We now, to return to Pell&eacute;as, know pretty well what to do and how to
+behave on the master's premises. But the world does not end at the
+house-door, and, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>beyond the walls and beyond the hedge, there is a
+universe of which one has not the custody, where one is no longer at
+home, where relations are changed. How are we to stand in the street, in
+the fields, in the market-place, in the shops? In consequence of
+difficult and delicate observations, we understand that we must take no
+notice of passers-by; obey no calls but the master's; be polite, with
+indifference, to strangers who pet us. Next, we must conscientiously
+fulfil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> certain obligations of mysterious courtesy toward our brothers
+the other dogs; respect chickens and ducks; not appear to remark the
+cakes at the pastry-cook's, which spread themselves insolently within
+reach of the tongue; show to the cats, who, on the steps of the houses,
+provoke us by hideous grimaces, a silent contempt, but one that will not
+forget; and remember that it is lawful and even commendable to chase and
+strangle mice, rats, wild rabbits and, generally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> speaking, all animals
+(we learn to know them by secret marks) that have not yet made their
+peace with mankind.</p>
+
+<p>All this and so much more!... Was it surprising that Pell&eacute;as often
+appeared pensive in the face of those numberless problems, and that his
+humble and gentle look was often so profound and grave, laden with cares
+and full of unreadable questions?</p>
+
+<p>Alas, he did not have time to finish the long and heavy task<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> which
+nature lays upon the instinct that rises in order to approach a brighter
+region.... An ill of a mysterious character, which seems specially to
+punish the only animal that succeeds in leaving the circle in which it
+is born; an indefinite ill that carries off hundreds of intelligent
+little dogs, came to put an end to the destiny and the happy education
+of Pell&eacute;as. And now all those efforts to achieve a little more light;
+all that ardour in loving, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>that courage in understanding; all that
+affectionate gaiety and innocent fawning; all those kind and devoted
+looks, which turned to man to ask for his assistance against unjust
+death; all those flickering gleams which came from the profound abyss of
+a world that is no longer ours; all those nearly human little habits lie
+sadly in the cold ground, under a flowering elder-tree, in a corner of
+the garden.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+<img src="images/illus-045.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>Man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it if he
+considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole
+exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in
+order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable,
+that separate the species! We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance
+planet; and amid all the forms of life that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> surround us, not one,
+excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. A few creatures fear
+us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of
+plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite
+of themselves. They simply endure our laws and our yoke. They are
+impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently
+rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray
+us and return<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> to their former wild and mischievous liberty. The rose
+and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach like the birds.</p>
+
+<p>Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only
+through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven
+horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive
+and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do
+nor where to go,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> but who nevertheless, under the cudgel and the
+pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and
+the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for
+centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted
+sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful
+to the poultry-yard because she finds more maize and wheat there than in
+the neighbouring forest. I do not speak of the cat, to whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> we are
+nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat,
+whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in
+our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all
+the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.
+They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are
+unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness,
+our joy, our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so
+soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is
+with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still
+hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first
+time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a
+momentary and useless accident of the pasture.</p>
+
+<p>For thousands of years, they have been living at our side, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> foreign
+to our thoughts, our affections, our habits as though the least
+fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe. In
+the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures,
+we have succeeded only, by dint of patience, in making them take two or
+three illusory steps. And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward
+us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons
+wherewith to conquer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty
+vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the
+maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun
+the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me
+with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye,
+as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me
+without a thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p>Now, in this indifference and this total want of comprehension in which
+everything that surrounds us lives; in this incommunicable world, where
+everything has its object hermetically contained within itself, where
+every destiny is self-circumscribed, where there exist among the
+creatures no other relations than those of executioners and victims,
+eaters and eaten, where nothing is able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> leave its steel-bound
+sphere, where death alone establishes cruel relations of cause and
+effect between neighbouring lives, where not the smallest sympathy has
+ever made a conscious leap from one species to another, one animal
+alone, among all that breathes upon the earth, has succeeded in breaking
+through the prophetic circle, in escaping from itself to come bounding
+toward us, definitely to cross the enormous zone of darkness, ice and
+silence that isolates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> each category of existence in nature's
+unintelligible plan. This animal, our good familiar dog, simple and
+unsurprising as may to-day appear to us what he has done, in thus
+perceptibly drawing nearer to a world in which he was not born and for
+which he was not destined, has nevertheless performed one of the most
+unusual and improbable acts that we can find in the general history of
+life. When was this recognition of man by beast, this extraordinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+passage from darkness to light, effected? Did we seek out the poodle,
+the collie, or the mastiff from among the wolves and the jackals, or did
+he come spontaneously to us? We cannot tell. So far as our human annals
+stretch, he is at our side, as at present; but what are human annals in
+comparison with the times of which we have no witness? The fact remains
+that he is there in our houses, as ancient, as rightly placed, as
+perfectly adapted to our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>habits as though he had appeared on this
+earth, such as he now is, at the same time as ourselves. We have not to
+gain his confidence or his friendship: he is born our friend; while his
+eyes are still closed, already he believes in us: even before his birth,
+he has given himself to man. But the word "friend" does not exactly
+depict his affectionate worship. He loves us and reveres us as though we
+had drawn him out of nothing. He is, before all, our creature full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> of
+gratitude and more devoted than the apple of our eye. He is our intimate
+and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing repels,
+whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair. He has solved, in an
+admirable and touching manner, the terrifying problem which human wisdom
+would have to solve if a divine race came to occupy our globe. He has
+loyally, religiously, irrevocably recognized man's superiority and has
+surrendered himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> to him body and soul, without after-thought,
+without any intention to go back, reserving of his independence, his
+instinct and his character only the small part indispensable to the
+continuation of the life prescribed by nature. With an unquestioning
+certainty, an unconstraint and a simplicity that surprise us a little,
+deeming us better and more powerful than all that exists, he betrays,
+for our benefit, the whole of the animal kingdom to which he belongs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+and, without scruple, denies his race, his kin, his mother and his
+young.</p>
+
+<p>But he loves us not only in his consciousness and his intelligence: the
+very instinct of his race, the entire unconsciousness of his species, it
+appears, think only of us, dream only of being useful to us. To serve us
+better, to adapt himself better to our different needs, he has adopted
+every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties, the
+aptitudes which he places at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> our disposal. Is he to aid us in the
+pursuit of game in the plains? His legs lengthen inordinately, his
+muzzle tapers, his lungs widen, he becomes swifter than the deer. Does
+our prey hide under wood? The docile genius of the species, forestalling
+our desires, presents us with the basset, a sort of almost footless
+serpent, which steals into the closest thickets. Do we ask that he
+should drive our flocks? The same compliant genius grants him the
+requisite size, intelligence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> energy and vigilance. Do we intend him to
+watch and defend our house? His head becomes round and monstrous, in
+order that his jaws may be more powerful, more formidable and more
+tenacious. Are we taking him to the south? His hair grows shorter and
+lighter, so that he may faithfully accompany us under the rays of a
+hotter sun. Are we going up to the north? His feet grow larger, the
+better to tread the snow; his fur thickens, in order that the cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> may
+not compel him to abandon us. Is he intended only for us to play with,
+to amuse the leisure of our eyes, to adorn or enliven the home? He
+clothes himself in a sovereign grace and elegance, he makes himself
+smaller than a doll to sleep on our knees by the fireside, or even
+consents, should our fancy demand it, to appear a little ridiculous to
+please us.</p>
+
+<p>You shall not find, in nature's immense crucible, a single living being
+that has shown a like suppleness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> a similar abundance of forms, the
+same prodigious faculty of accommodation to our wishes. This is because,
+in the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses
+that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not
+one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>It will, perhaps, be said that we have been able to transform almost as
+profoundly some of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> domestic animals: our hens, our pigeons, our
+ducks, our cats, our horses, our rabbits, for instance. Yes, perhaps;
+although such transformations are not comparable with those undergone by
+the dog and although the kind of service which these animals render us
+remains, so to speak, invariable. In any case, whether this impression
+be purely imaginary or correspond with a reality, it does not appear
+that we feel in these transformations the same unfailing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> preventing
+good will, the same sagacious and exclusive love. For the rest, it is
+quite possible that the dog, or rather the inaccessible genius of his
+race, troubles scarcely at all about us and that we have merely known
+how to make use of various aptitudes offered by the abundant chances of
+life. It matters not: as we know nothing of the substance of things, we
+must needs cling to appearances; and it is sweet to establish that, at
+least in appearance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> there is on the planet where, like unacknowledged
+kings, we live in solitary state, a being that loves us.</p>
+
+<p>However the case may stand with these appearances, it is none the less
+certain that, in the aggregate of intelligent creatures that have
+rights, duties, a mission and a destiny, the dog is a really privileged
+animal. He occupies in this world a pre-eminent position enviable among
+all. He is the only living being that has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> found and recognizes an
+indubitable, tangible, unexceptionable and definite god. He knows to
+what to devote the best part of himself. He knows to whom above him to
+give himself. He has not to seek for a perfect, superior and infinite
+power in the darkness, amid successive lies, hypotheses and dreams. That
+power is there, before him, and he moves in its light. He knows the
+supreme duties which we all do not know. He has a morality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> which
+surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself and which he can
+practise without scruple and without fear. He possesses truth in its
+fulness. He has a certain and infinite ideal.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+<img src="images/illus-059.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<p>And it was thus that, the other day, before his illness, I saw my little
+Pell&eacute;as sitting at the foot of my writing-table, his tail carefully
+folded under his paws, his head a little on one side, the better to
+question me, at once attentive and tranquil, as a saint should be in the
+presence of God. He was happy with the happiness which we, perhaps,
+shall never know, since it sprang from the smile and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> approval of a
+life incomparably higher than his own. He was there, studying, drinking
+in all my looks; and he replied to them gravely, as from equal to equal,
+to inform me, no doubt, that, at least through the eyes the most
+immaterial organ that transformed into affectionate intelligence the
+light which we enjoyed, he knew that he was saying to me all that love
+should say. And, when I saw him thus, young, ardent and believing,
+bringing me, in some wise, from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> the depths of unwearied nature, quite
+fresh news of life and trusting and wonderstruck, as though he had been
+the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we
+were still in the first days of the world's existence, I envied the
+gladness of his certainty, compared it with the destiny of man, still
+plunging on every side into darkness, and said to myself that the dog
+who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Friend the Dog
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Illustrator: Cecil Alden
+
+Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+Release Date: April 20, 2006 [EBook #18214]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR FRIEND THE DOG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+OUR FRIEND THE DOG
+
+BY
+MAURICE MAETERLINCK
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF THE BEE," ETC.
+
+TRANSLATED BY
+ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+CECIL ALDEN
+
+
+NEW YORK
+DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
+
+1913
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE CENTURY CO.
+COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
+
+Published, October, 1913
+
+
+
+
+OUR FRIEND THE DOG
+
+I
+
+
+I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just
+completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His
+intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind,
+then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.
+
+The friend who presented me with him had given him, perhaps by
+antiphrasis, the startling name of Pelleas. Why rechristen him? For how
+can a poor dog, loving, devoted, faithful, disgrace the name of a man or
+an imaginary hero?
+
+Pelleas had a great bulging, powerful forehead, like that of Socrates or
+Verlaine; and, under a little black nose, blunt as a churlish assent, a
+pair of large hanging and symmetrical chops, which made his head a sort
+of massive, obstinate, pensive and three-cornered menace. He was
+beautiful after the manner of a beautiful, natural monster that has
+complied strictly with the laws of its species. And what a smile of
+attentive obligingness, of incorruptible innocence, of affectionate
+submission, of boundless gratitude and total self-abandonment lit up, at
+the least caress, that adorable mask of ugliness! Whence exactly did
+that smile emanate? From the ingenuous and melting eyes? From the ears
+pricked up to catch the words of man? From the forehead that unwrinkled
+to appreciate and love, or from the stump of a tail that wriggled at the
+other end to testify to the intimate and impassioned joy that filled his
+small being, happy once more to encounter the hand or the glance of the
+god to whom he surrendered himself?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Pelleas was born in Paris, and I had taken him to the country. His bonny
+fat paws, shapeless and not yet stiffened, carried slackly through the
+unexplored pathways of his new existence his huge and serious head,
+flat-nosed and, as it were, rendered heavy with thought.
+
+For this thankless and rather sad head, like that of an overworked
+child, was beginning the overwhelming work that oppresses every brain at
+the start of life. He had, in less than five or six weeks, to get into
+his mind, taking shape within it, an image and a satisfactory
+conception of the universe. Man, aided by all the knowledge of his own
+elders and his brothers, takes thirty or forty years to outline that
+conception, but the humble dog has to unravel it for himself in a few
+days: and yet, in the eyes of a god, who should know all things, would
+it not have the same weight and the same value as our own?
+
+It was a question, then, of studying the ground, which can be scratched
+and dug up and which sometimes reveals surprising things; of casting at
+the sky, which is uninteresting, for there is nothing there to eat, one
+glance that does away with it for good and all; of discovering the
+grass, the admirable and green grass, the springy and cool grass, a
+field for races and sports, a friendly and boundless bed, in which lies
+hidden the good and wholesome couch-grass. It was a question, also, of
+taking promiscuously a thousand urgent and curious observations. It was
+necessary, for instance, with no other guide than pain, to learn to
+calculate the height of objects from the top of which you can jump into
+space; to convince yourself that it is vain to pursue birds who fly away
+and that you are unable to clamber up trees after the cats who defy you
+there; to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to
+sleep and the patches of shade in which you shiver; to remark with
+stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses, that water
+is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous, while fire is beneficent at a
+distance, but terrible when you come too near; to observe that the
+meadows, the farm-yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant
+creatures with threatening horns, creatures good-natured, perhaps, and,
+at any rate, silent, creatures who allow you to sniff at them a little
+curiously without taking offence, but who keep their real thoughts to
+themselves. It was necessary to learn, as the result of painful and
+humiliating experiment, that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's
+laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods; to recognize that
+the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine
+dwelling, although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the
+cook, who is a considerable, but jealous power; to learn that doors are
+important and capricious volitions, which sometimes lead to felicity,
+but which most often, hermetically closed, mute and stern, haughty and
+heartless, remain deaf to all entreaties; to admit, once and for all,
+that the essential good things of life, the indisputable blessings,
+generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always
+inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired
+indifference and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to
+yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely
+to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose
+the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+And then, what is one to think of the table on which so many things
+happen that cannot be guessed; of the derisive chairs on which one is
+forbidden to sleep; of the plates and dishes that are empty by the
+time that one can get at them; of the lamp that drives away the dark?...
+How many orders, dangers, prohibitions, problems, enigmas has one not to
+classify in one's overburdened memory!... And how to reconcile all this
+with other laws, other enigmas, wider and more imperious, which one
+bears within one's self, within one's instinct, which spring up and
+develop from one hour to the other, which come from the depths of time
+and the race, invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves and suddenly
+assert themselves more irresistibly and more powerfully than pain, the
+word of the master himself, or the fear of death?
+
+Thus, for instance, to quote only one example, when the hour of sleep
+has struck for men, you have retired to your hole, surrounded by the
+darkness, the silence and the formidable solitude of the night. All is
+sleep in the master's house. You feel yourself very small and weak in
+the presence of the mystery. You know that the gloom is peopled with
+foes who hover and lie in wait. You suspect the trees, the passing wind
+and the moonbeams. You would like to hide, to suppress yourself by
+holding your breath. But still the watch must be kept; you must, at the
+least sound, issue from your retreat, face the invisible and bluntly
+disturb the imposing silence of the earth, at the risk of bringing down
+the whispering evil or crime upon yourself alone. Whoever the enemy be,
+even if he be man, that is to say, the very brother of the god whom it
+is your business to defend, you must attack him blindly, fly at his
+throat, fasten your perhaps sacrilegious teeth into human flesh,
+disregard the spell of a hand and voice similar to those of your master,
+never be silent, never attempt to escape, never allow yourself to be
+tempted or bribed and, lost in the night without help, prolong the
+heroic alarm to your last breath.
+
+There is the great ancestral duty, the essential duty, stronger than
+death, which not even man's will and anger are able to check. All our
+humble history, linked with that of the dog in our first struggles
+against every breathing thing, tends to prevent his forgetting it. And
+when, in our safer dwelling-places of to-day, we happen to punish him
+for his untimely zeal, he throws us a glance of astonished reproach, as
+though to point out to us that we are in the wrong and that, if we lose
+sight of the main clause in the treaty of alliance which he made with us
+at the time when we lived in caves, forests and fens, he continues
+faithful to it in spite of us and remains nearer to the eternal truth of
+life, which is full of snares and hostile forces.
+
+But how much care and study are needed to succeed in fulfilling this
+duty! And how complicated it has become since the days of the silent
+caverns and the great deserted lakes! It was all so simple, then, so
+easy and so clear. The lonely hollow opened upon the side of the hill,
+and all that approached, all that moved on the horizon of the plains or
+woods, was the unmistakable enemy.... But to-day you can no longer
+tell.... You have to acquaint yourself with a civilization of which you
+disapprove, to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible
+things.... Thus, it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no
+longer belongs to the master, that his property conforms to
+unintelligible limits.... It becomes necessary, therefore, first of all
+to know exactly where the sacred domain begins and ends. Whom are you to
+suffer, whom to stop?... There is the road by which every one, even the
+poor, has the right to pass. Why? You do not know; it is a fact which
+you deplore, but which you are bound to accept. Fortunately, on the
+other hand, here is the fair path which none may tread. This path is
+faithful to the sound traditions; it is not to be lost sight of; for by
+it enter into your daily existence the difficult problems of life.
+
+Would you have an example? You are sleeping peacefully in a ray of the
+sun that covers the threshold of the kitchen with pearls. The
+earthenware pots are amusing themselves by elbowing and nudging one
+another on the edge of the shelves trimmed with paper lace-work. The
+copper stewpans play at scattering spots of light over the smooth white
+walls. The motherly stove hums a soft tune and dandles three saucepans
+blissfully dancing; and, from the little hole that lights up its inside,
+defies the good dog who cannot approach, by constantly putting out at
+him its fiery tongue. The clock, bored in its oak case, before striking
+the august hour of meal time, swings its great gilt navel to and fro;
+and the cunning flies tease your ears. On the glittering table lie a
+chicken, a hare, three partridges, besides other things which are called
+fruits--peaches, melons, grapes--and which are all good for nothing. The
+cook guts a big silver fish and throws the entrails (instead of giving
+them to you!) into the dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin! Inexhaustible
+treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall
+have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does
+not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to
+rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life
+would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all the
+orders of the pantry, the cellar and the dining-room. Luckily, he is
+absent-minded and does not long remember the instructions which he
+lavishes. He is easily deceived. You achieve your ends and do as you
+please, provided you have the patience to await the hour. You are
+subject to man, and he is the one god; but you none the less have your
+own personal, exact and imperturbable morality, which proclaims aloud
+that illicit acts become most lawful through the very fact that they
+are performed without the master's knowledge. Therefore, let us close
+the watchful eye that has seen. Let us pretend to sleep and to dream of
+the moon....
+
+Hark! A gentle tapping at the blue window that looks out on the garden!
+What is it? Nothing; a bough of hawthorn that has come to see what we
+are doing in the cool kitchen. Trees are inquisitive and often excited;
+but they do not count, one has nothing to say to them, they are
+irresponsible, they obey the wind, which has no principles.... But what
+is that? I hear steps!... Up, ears open; nose on the alert!... It is the
+baker coming up to the rails, while the postman is opening a little gate
+in the hedge of lime-trees. They are friends; it is well; they bring
+something: you can greet them and wag your tail discreetly twice or
+thrice, with a patronizing smile....
+
+Another alarm! What is it now? A carriage pulls up in front of the
+steps. The problem is a complex one. Before all, it is of consequence to
+heap copious insults on the horses, great, proud beasts, who make no
+reply. Meantime, you examine out of the corner of your eye the persons
+alighting. They are well-clad and seem full of confidence. They are
+probably going to sit at the table of the gods. The proper thing is to
+bark without acrimony, with a shade of respect, so as to show that you
+are doing your duty, but that you are doing it with intelligence.
+Nevertheless, you cherish a lurking suspicion and, behind the guests'
+backs, stealthily, you sniff the air persistently and in a knowing way,
+in order to discern any hidden intentions.
+
+But halting footsteps resound outside the kitchen. This time it is the
+poor man dragging his crutch, the unmistakable enemy, the hereditary
+enemy, the direct descendant of him who roamed outside the bone-cramped
+cave which you suddenly see again in your racial memory. Drunk with
+indignation, your bark broken, your teeth multiplied with hatred and
+rage, you are about to seize their reconcilable adversary by the
+breeches, when the cook, armed with her broom, the ancillary and
+forsworn sceptre, comes to protect the traitor, and you are obliged to
+go back to your hole, where, with eyes filled with impotent and
+slanting flames, you growl out frightful, but futile curses, thinking
+within yourself that this is the end of all things, and that the human
+species has lost its notion of justice and injustice....
+
+Is that all? Not yet; for the smallest life is made up of innumerous
+duties, and it is a long work to organize a happy existence upon the
+borderland of two such different worlds as the world of beasts and the
+world of men. How should we fare if we had to serve, while remaining
+within our own sphere, a divinity, not an imaginary one, like to
+ourselves, because the offspring of our own brain, but a god actually
+visible, ever present, ever active and as foreign, as superior to our
+being as we are to the dog?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We now, to return to Pelleas, know pretty well what to do and how to
+behave on the master's premises. But the world does not end at the
+house-door, and, beyond the walls and beyond the hedge, there is a
+universe of which one has not the custody, where one is no longer at
+home, where relations are changed. How are we to stand in the street, in
+the fields, in the market-place, in the shops? In consequence of
+difficult and delicate observations, we understand that we must take no
+notice of passers-by; obey no calls but the master's; be polite, with
+indifference, to strangers who pet us. Next, we must conscientiously
+fulfil certain obligations of mysterious courtesy toward our brothers
+the other dogs; respect chickens and ducks; not appear to remark the
+cakes at the pastry-cook's, which spread themselves insolently within
+reach of the tongue; show to the cats, who, on the steps of the houses,
+provoke us by hideous grimaces, a silent contempt, but one that will not
+forget; and remember that it is lawful and even commendable to chase and
+strangle mice, rats, wild rabbits and, generally speaking, all animals
+(we learn to know them by secret marks) that have not yet made their
+peace with mankind.
+
+All this and so much more!... Was it surprising that Pelleas often
+appeared pensive in the face of those numberless problems, and that his
+humble and gentle look was often so profound and grave, laden with cares
+and full of unreadable questions?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Alas, he did not have time to finish the long and heavy task which
+nature lays upon the instinct that rises in order to approach a brighter
+region.... An ill of a mysterious character, which seems specially to
+punish the only animal that succeeds in leaving the circle in which it
+is born; an indefinite ill that carries off hundreds of intelligent
+little dogs, came to put an end to the destiny and the happy education
+of Pelleas. And now all those efforts to achieve a little more light;
+all that ardour in loving, that courage in understanding; all that
+affectionate gaiety and innocent fawning; all those kind and devoted
+looks, which turned to man to ask for his assistance against unjust
+death; all those flickering gleams which came from the profound abyss of
+a world that is no longer ours; all those nearly human little habits lie
+sadly in the cold ground, under a flowering elder-tree, in a corner of
+the garden.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it if he
+considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole
+exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in
+order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable,
+that separate the species! We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance
+planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one,
+excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. A few creatures fear
+us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of
+plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite
+of themselves. They simply endure our laws and our yoke. They are
+impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently
+rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray
+us and return to their former wild and mischievous liberty. The rose
+and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach like the birds.
+
+Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only
+through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven
+horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive
+and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do
+nor where to go, but who nevertheless, under the cudgel and the
+pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and
+the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for
+centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted
+sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful
+to the poultry-yard because she finds more maize and wheat there than in
+the neighbouring forest. I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are
+nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat,
+whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in
+our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all
+the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.
+They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are
+unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness,
+our joy, our smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so
+soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is
+with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still
+hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first
+time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a
+momentary and useless accident of the pasture.
+
+For thousands of years, they have been living at our side, as foreign
+to our thoughts, our affections, our habits as though the least
+fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe. In
+the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures,
+we have succeeded only, by dint of patience, in making them take two or
+three illusory steps. And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward
+us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons
+wherewith to conquer us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty
+vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the
+maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun
+the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me
+with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye,
+as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me
+without a thought.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Now, in this indifference and this total want of comprehension in which
+everything that surrounds us lives; in this incommunicable world, where
+everything has its object hermetically contained within itself, where
+every destiny is self-circumscribed, where there exist among the
+creatures no other relations than those of executioners and victims,
+eaters and eaten, where nothing is able to leave its steel-bound
+sphere, where death alone establishes cruel relations of cause and
+effect between neighbouring lives, where not the smallest sympathy has
+ever made a conscious leap from one species to another, one animal
+alone, among all that breathes upon the earth, has succeeded in breaking
+through the prophetic circle, in escaping from itself to come bounding
+toward us, definitely to cross the enormous zone of darkness, ice and
+silence that isolates each category of existence in nature's
+unintelligible plan. This animal, our good familiar dog, simple and
+unsurprising as may to-day appear to us what he has done, in thus
+perceptibly drawing nearer to a world in which he was not born and for
+which he was not destined, has nevertheless performed one of the most
+unusual and improbable acts that we can find in the general history of
+life. When was this recognition of man by beast, this extraordinary
+passage from darkness to light, effected? Did we seek out the poodle,
+the collie, or the mastiff from among the wolves and the jackals, or did
+he come spontaneously to us? We cannot tell. So far as our human annals
+stretch, he is at our side, as at present; but what are human annals in
+comparison with the times of which we have no witness? The fact remains
+that he is there in our houses, as ancient, as rightly placed, as
+perfectly adapted to our habits as though he had appeared on this
+earth, such as he now is, at the same time as ourselves. We have not to
+gain his confidence or his friendship: he is born our friend; while his
+eyes are still closed, already he believes in us: even before his birth,
+he has given himself to man. But the word "friend" does not exactly
+depict his affectionate worship. He loves us and reveres us as though we
+had drawn him out of nothing. He is, before all, our creature full of
+gratitude and more devoted than the apple of our eye. He is our intimate
+and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing repels,
+whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair. He has solved, in an
+admirable and touching manner, the terrifying problem which human wisdom
+would have to solve if a divine race came to occupy our globe. He has
+loyally, religiously, irrevocably recognized man's superiority and has
+surrendered himself to him body and soul, without after-thought,
+without any intention to go back, reserving of his independence, his
+instinct and his character only the small part indispensable to the
+continuation of the life prescribed by nature. With an unquestioning
+certainty, an unconstraint and a simplicity that surprise us a little,
+deeming us better and more powerful than all that exists, he betrays,
+for our benefit, the whole of the animal kingdom to which he belongs
+and, without scruple, denies his race, his kin, his mother and his
+young.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+But he loves us not only in his consciousness and his intelligence: the
+very instinct of his race, the entire unconsciousness of his species, it
+appears, think only of us, dream only of being useful to us. To serve us
+better, to adapt himself better to our different needs, he has adopted
+every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties, the
+aptitudes which he places at our disposal. Is he to aid us in the
+pursuit of game in the plains? His legs lengthen inordinately, his
+muzzle tapers, his lungs widen, he becomes swifter than the deer. Does
+our prey hide under wood? The docile genius of the species, forestalling
+our desires, presents us with the basset, a sort of almost footless
+serpent, which steals into the closest thickets. Do we ask that he
+should drive our flocks? The same compliant genius grants him the
+requisite size, intelligence, energy and vigilance. Do we intend him to
+watch and defend our house? His head becomes round and monstrous, in
+order that his jaws may be more powerful, more formidable and more
+tenacious. Are we taking him to the south? His hair grows shorter and
+lighter, so that he may faithfully accompany us under the rays of a
+hotter sun. Are we going up to the north? His feet grow larger, the
+better to tread the snow; his fur thickens, in order that the cold may
+not compel him to abandon us. Is he intended only for us to play with,
+to amuse the leisure of our eyes, to adorn or enliven the home? He
+clothes himself in a sovereign grace and elegance, he makes himself
+smaller than a doll to sleep on our knees by the fireside, or even
+consents, should our fancy demand it, to appear a little ridiculous to
+please us.
+
+You shall not find, in nature's immense crucible, a single living being
+that has shown a like suppleness, a similar abundance of forms, the
+same prodigious faculty of accommodation to our wishes. This is because,
+in the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses
+that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not
+one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence
+of man.
+
+It will, perhaps, be said that we have been able to transform almost as
+profoundly some of our domestic animals: our hens, our pigeons, our
+ducks, our cats, our horses, our rabbits, for instance. Yes, perhaps;
+although such transformations are not comparable with those undergone by
+the dog and although the kind of service which these animals render us
+remains, so to speak, invariable. In any case, whether this impression
+be purely imaginary or correspond with a reality, it does not appear
+that we feel in these transformations the same unfailing and preventing
+good will, the same sagacious and exclusive love. For the rest, it is
+quite possible that the dog, or rather the inaccessible genius of his
+race, troubles scarcely at all about us and that we have merely known
+how to make use of various aptitudes offered by the abundant chances of
+life. It matters not: as we know nothing of the substance of things, we
+must needs cling to appearances; and it is sweet to establish that, at
+least in appearance, there is on the planet where, like unacknowledged
+kings, we live in solitary state, a being that loves us.
+
+However the case may stand with these appearances, it is none the less
+certain that, in the aggregate of intelligent creatures that have
+rights, duties, a mission and a destiny, the dog is a really privileged
+animal. He occupies in this world a pre-eminent position enviable among
+all. He is the only living being that has found and recognizes an
+indubitable, tangible, unexceptionable and definite god. He knows to
+what to devote the best part of himself. He knows to whom above him to
+give himself. He has not to seek for a perfect, superior and infinite
+power in the darkness, amid successive lies, hypotheses and dreams. That
+power is there, before him, and he moves in its light. He knows the
+supreme duties which we all do not know. He has a morality which
+surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself and which he can
+practise without scruple and without fear. He possesses truth in its
+fulness. He has a certain and infinite ideal.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+And it was thus that, the other day, before his illness, I saw my little
+Pelleas sitting at the foot of my writing-table, his tail carefully
+folded under his paws, his head a little on one side, the better to
+question me, at once attentive and tranquil, as a saint should be in the
+presence of God. He was happy with the happiness which we, perhaps,
+shall never know, since it sprang from the smile and the approval of a
+life incomparably higher than his own. He was there, studying, drinking
+in all my looks; and he replied to them gravely, as from equal to equal,
+to inform me, no doubt, that, at least through the eyes the most
+immaterial organ that transformed into affectionate intelligence the
+light which we enjoyed, he knew that he was saying to me all that love
+should say. And, when I saw him thus, young, ardent and believing,
+bringing me, in some wise, from the depths of unwearied nature, quite
+fresh news of life and trusting and wonderstruck, as though he had been
+the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we
+were still in the first days of the world's existence, I envied the
+gladness of his certainty, compared it with the destiny of man, still
+plunging on every side into darkness, and said to myself that the dog
+who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #18214 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18214)
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+    </title>
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+    /*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
+    <!--
+    body              {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
+    p                 {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .figcenter        {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
+    .tnote            {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;
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+    hr                {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;
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+    hr.minor          {width:30%; margin-top:0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}
+    table             {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
+    .pagenum          {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: x-small; text-align: right; }
+    // -->
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+<body>
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+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Friend the Dog
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Illustrator: Cecil Alden
+
+Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
+
+Release Date: April 20, 2006 [EBook #18214]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR FRIEND THE DOG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-002.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<table width="400" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="Title Page" border="1">
+  <col style="width:80%;" />
+  <tr>
+    <td align="center">
+     <p style="margin-top: 5em"></p>
+      <span style="font-size: 200%">OUR FRIEND<br />THE DOG</span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 90%;">BY</span><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 110%;">MAURICE MAETERLINCK</span><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 70%; font-variant: small-caps;">
+        Author of "THE LIFE OF THE BEE," etc.
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 80%; font-variant: small-caps;">
+        Translated by<br />ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTTOS
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="font-size: 70%; font-variant: small-caps;">
+        Illustrated by<br />CECIL ALDEN
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+      <span style="text-align:center; font-size: 100%;">
+        NEW YORK<br />DODD, MEAD &amp; COMPANY<br />1913
+      </span>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<p style="text-align: center; font-size: 85%; font-variant: small-caps">
+Copyright, 1903, by<br />
+The Century Co.<br />
+<br />
+Copyright, 1904, by<br />
+Dodd, Mead &amp; Company<br />
+<br />
+Published, October, 1913
+</p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+
+<div>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+<h2>OUR FRIEND THE DOG</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h3>
+
+<p>I have lost, within these last few days, a little bull-dog. He had just
+completed the sixth month of his brief existence. He had no history. His
+intelligent eyes opened to look out upon the world, to love mankind,
+then closed again on the cruel secrets of death.</p>
+
+<p>The friend who presented me with him had given him, perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> by
+antiphrasis, the startling name of Pell&eacute;as. Why rechristen him? For how
+can a poor dog, loving, devoted, faithful, disgrace the name of a man or
+an imaginary hero?</p>
+
+<p>Pell&eacute;as had a great bulging, powerful forehead, like that of Socrates or
+Verlaine; and, under a little black nose, blunt as a churlish assent, a
+pair of large hanging and symmetrical chops, which made his head a sort
+of massive, obstinate, pensive and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> three-cornered menace. He was
+beautiful after the manner of a beautiful, natural monster that has
+complied strictly with the laws of its species. And what a smile of
+attentive obligingness, of incorruptible innocence, of affectionate
+submission, of boundless gratitude and total self-abandonment lit up, at
+the least caress, that adorable mask of ugliness! Whence exactly did
+that smile emanate? From the ingenuous and melting eyes? From the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> ears
+pricked up to catch the words of man? From the forehead that unwrinkled
+to appreciate and love, or from the stump of a tail that wriggled at the
+other end to testify to the intimate and impassioned joy that filled his
+small being, happy once more to encounter the hand or the glance of the
+god to whom he surrendered himself?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-010.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Pell&eacute;as was born in Paris, and I had taken him to the country. His bonny
+fat paws, shapeless <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>and not yet stiffened, carried slackly through the
+unexplored pathways of his new existence his huge and serious head,
+flat-nosed and, as it were, rendered heavy with thought.</p>
+
+<p>For this thankless and rather sad head, like that of an overworked
+child, was beginning the overwhelming work that oppresses every brain at
+the start of life. He had, in less than five or six weeks, to get into
+his mind, taking shape within it, an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> image and a satisfactory
+conception of the universe. Man, aided by all the knowledge of his own
+elders and his brothers, takes thirty or forty years to outline that
+conception, but the humble dog has to unravel it for himself in a few
+days: and yet, in the eyes of a god, who should know all things, would
+it not have the same weight and the same value as our own?</p>
+
+<p>It was a question, then, of studying the ground, which can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> be scratched
+and dug up and which sometimes reveals surprising things; of casting at
+the sky, which is uninteresting, for there is nothing there to eat, one
+glance that does away with it for good and all; of discovering the
+grass, the admirable and green grass, the springy and cool grass, a
+field for races and sports, a friendly and boundless bed, in which lies
+hidden the good and wholesome couch-grass. It was a question, also, of
+taking promiscuously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> a thousand urgent and curious observations. It was
+necessary, for instance, with no other guide than pain, to learn to
+calculate the height of objects from the top of which you can jump into
+space; to convince yourself that it is vain to pursue birds who fly away
+and that you are unable to clamber up trees after the cats who defy you
+there; to distinguish between the sunny spots where it is delicious to
+sleep and the patches of shade<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> in which you shiver; to remark with
+stupefaction that the rain does not fall inside the houses, that water
+is cold, uninhabitable and dangerous, while fire is beneficent at a
+distance, but terrible when you come too near; to observe that the
+meadows, the farm-yards and sometimes the roads are haunted by giant
+creatures with threatening horns, creatures good-natured, perhaps, and,
+at any rate, silent, creatures who allow you to sniff at them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> a little
+curiously without taking offence, but who keep their real thoughts to
+themselves. It was necessary to learn, as the result of painful and
+humiliating experiment, that you are not at liberty to obey all nature's
+laws without distinction in the dwelling of the gods; to recognize that
+the kitchen is the privileged and most agreeable spot in that divine
+dwelling, although you are hardly allowed to abide in it because of the
+cook, who is a considerable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> but jealous power; to learn that doors are
+important and capricious volitions, which sometimes lead to felicity,
+but which most often, hermetically closed, mute and stern, haughty and
+heartless, remain deaf to all entreaties; to admit, once and for all,
+that the essential good things of life, the indisputable blessings,
+generally imprisoned in pots and stewpans, are almost always
+inaccessible; to know how to look at them with laboriously-acquired
+indifference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> and to practise to take no notice of them, saying to
+yourself that here are objects which are probably sacred, since merely
+to skim them with the tip of a respectful tongue is enough to let loose
+the unanimous anger of all the gods of the house.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-019.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>And then, what is one to think of the table on which so many things
+happen that cannot be guessed; of the derisive chairs on which one is
+forbidden to sleep; of the plates and dishes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>that are empty by the
+time that one can get at them; of the lamp that drives away the dark?...
+How many orders, dangers, prohibitions, problems, enigmas has one not to
+classify in one's overburdened memory!... And how to reconcile all this
+with other laws, other enigmas, wider and more imperious, which one
+bears within one's self, within one's instinct, which spring up and
+develop from one hour to the other, which come from the depths of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> time
+and the race, invade the blood, the muscles and the nerves and suddenly
+assert themselves more irresistibly and more powerfully than pain, the
+word of the master himself, or the fear of death?</p>
+
+<p>Thus, for instance, to quote only one example, when the hour of sleep
+has struck for men, you have retired to your hole, surrounded by the
+darkness, the silence and the formidable solitude of the night. All is
+sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> in the master's house. You feel yourself very small and weak in
+the presence of the mystery. You know that the gloom is peopled with
+foes who hover and lie in wait. You suspect the trees, the passing wind
+and the moonbeams. You would like to hide, to suppress yourself by
+holding your breath. But still the watch must be kept; you must, at the
+least sound, issue from your retreat, face the invisible and bluntly
+disturb the imposing silence of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> earth, at the risk of bringing down
+the whispering evil or crime upon yourself alone. Whoever the enemy be,
+even if he be man, that is to say, the very brother of the god whom it
+is your business to defend, you must attack him blindly, fly at his
+throat, fasten your perhaps sacrilegious teeth into human flesh,
+disregard the spell of a hand and voice similar to those of your master,
+never be silent, never attempt to escape, never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> allow yourself to be
+tempted or bribed and, lost in the night without help, prolong the
+heroic alarm to your last breath.</p>
+
+<p>There is the great ancestral duty, the essential duty, stronger than
+death, which not even man's will and anger are able to check. All our
+humble history, linked with that of the dog in our first struggles
+against every breathing thing, tends to prevent his forgetting it. And
+when, in our safer dwelling-places of to-day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> we happen to punish him
+for his untimely zeal, he throws us a glance of astonished reproach, as
+though to point out to us that we are in the wrong and that, if we lose
+sight of the main clause in the treaty of alliance which he made with us
+at the time when we lived in caves, forests and fens, he continues
+faithful to it in spite of us and remains nearer to the eternal truth of
+life, which is full of snares and hostile forces.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But how much care and study are needed to succeed in fulfilling this
+duty! And how complicated it has become since the days of the silent
+caverns and the great deserted lakes! It was all so simple, then, so
+easy and so clear. The lonely hollow opened upon the side of the hill,
+and all that approached, all that moved on the horizon of the plains or
+woods, was the unmistakable enemy.... But to-day you can no longer
+tell....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> You have to acquaint yourself with a civilization of which you
+disapprove, to appear to understand a thousand incomprehensible
+things.... Thus, it seems evident that henceforth the whole world no
+longer belongs to the master, that his property conforms to
+unintelligible limits.... It becomes necessary, therefore, first of all
+to know exactly where the sacred domain begins and ends. Whom are you to
+suffer, whom to stop?... There is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the road by which every one, even the
+poor, has the right to pass. Why? You do not know; it is a fact which
+you deplore, but which you are bound to accept. Fortunately, on the
+other hand, here is the fair path which none may tread. This path is
+faithful to the sound traditions; it is not to be lost sight of; for by
+it enter into your daily existence the difficult problems of life.</p>
+
+<p>Would you have an example? You are sleeping peacefully in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> a ray of the
+sun that covers the threshold of the kitchen with pearls. The
+earthenware pots are amusing themselves by elbowing and nudging one
+another on the edge of the shelves trimmed with paper lace-work. The
+copper stewpans play at scattering spots of light over the smooth white
+walls. The motherly stove hums a soft tune and dandles three saucepans
+blissfully dancing; and, from the little hole that lights up its inside,
+defies the good dog<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> who cannot approach, by constantly putting out at
+him its fiery tongue. The clock, bored in its oak case, before striking
+the august hour of meal time, swings its great gilt navel to and fro;
+and the cunning flies tease your ears. On the glittering table lie a
+chicken, a hare, three partridges, besides other things which are called
+fruits&mdash;peaches, melons, grapes&mdash;and which are all good for nothing. The
+cook guts a big silver fish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and throws the entrails (instead of giving
+them to you!) into the dust-bin. Ah, the dust-bin! Inexhaustible
+treasury, receptacle of windfalls, the jewel of the house! You shall
+have your share of it, an exquisite and surreptitious share; but it does
+not do to seem to know where it is. You are strictly forbidden to
+rummage in it. Man in this way prohibits many pleasant things, and life
+would be dull indeed and your days empty if you had to obey all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> the
+orders of the pantry, the cellar and the dining-room. Luckily, he is
+absent-minded and does not long remember the instructions which he
+lavishes. He is easily deceived. You achieve your ends and do as you
+please, provided you have the patience to await the hour. You are
+subject to man, and he is the one god; but you none the less have your
+own personal, exact and imperturbable morality, which proclaims aloud
+that illicit acts become most lawful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> through the very fact that they
+are performed without the master's knowledge. Therefore, let us close
+the watchful eye that has seen. Let us pretend to sleep and to dream of
+the moon....</p>
+
+<p>Hark! A gentle tapping at the blue window that looks out on the garden!
+What is it? Nothing; a bough of hawthorn that has come to see what we
+are doing in the cool kitchen. Trees are inquisitive and often excited;
+but they do not count, one has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> nothing to say to them, they are
+irresponsible, they obey the wind, which has no principles.... But what
+is that? I hear steps!... Up, ears open; nose on the alert!... It is the
+baker coming up to the rails, while the postman is opening a little gate
+in the hedge of lime-trees. They are friends; it is well; they bring
+something: you can greet them and wag your tail discreetly twice or
+thrice, with a patronizing smile....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another alarm! What is it now? A carriage pulls up in front of the
+steps. The problem is a complex one. Before all, it is of consequence to
+heap copious insults on the horses, great, proud beasts, who make no
+reply. Meantime, you examine out of the corner of your eye the persons
+alighting. They are well-clad and seem full of confidence. They are
+probably going to sit at the table of the gods. The proper thing is to
+bark without acrimony, with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> shade of respect, so as to show that you
+are doing your duty, but that you are doing it with intelligence.
+Nevertheless, you cherish a lurking suspicion and, behind the guests'
+backs, stealthily, you sniff the air persistently and in a knowing way,
+in order to discern any hidden intentions.</p>
+
+<p>But halting footsteps resound outside the kitchen. This time it is the
+poor man dragging his crutch, the unmistakable enemy, the hereditary
+enemy, the direct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> descendant of him who roamed outside the bone-cramped
+cave which you suddenly see again in your racial memory. Drunk with
+indignation, your bark broken, your teeth multiplied with hatred and
+rage, you are about to seize their reconcilable adversary by the
+breeches, when the cook, armed with her broom, the ancillary and
+forsworn sceptre, comes to protect the traitor, and you are obliged to
+go back to your hole, where, with eyes filled with impotent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> and
+slanting flames, you growl out frightful, but futile curses, thinking
+within yourself that this is the end of all things, and that the human
+species has lost its notion of justice and injustice....</p>
+
+<p>Is that all? Not yet; for the smallest life is made up of innumerous
+duties, and it is a long work to organize a happy existence upon the
+borderland of two such different worlds as the world of beasts and the
+world of men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> How should we fare if we had to serve, while remaining
+within our own sphere, a divinity, not an imaginary one, like to
+ourselves, because the offspring of our own brain, but a god actually
+visible, ever present, ever active and as foreign, as superior to our
+being as we are to the dog?</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<img src="images/illus-040.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>We now, to return to Pell&eacute;as, know pretty well what to do and how to
+behave on the master's premises. But the world does not end at the
+house-door, and, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>beyond the walls and beyond the hedge, there is a
+universe of which one has not the custody, where one is no longer at
+home, where relations are changed. How are we to stand in the street, in
+the fields, in the market-place, in the shops? In consequence of
+difficult and delicate observations, we understand that we must take no
+notice of passers-by; obey no calls but the master's; be polite, with
+indifference, to strangers who pet us. Next, we must conscientiously
+fulfil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> certain obligations of mysterious courtesy toward our brothers
+the other dogs; respect chickens and ducks; not appear to remark the
+cakes at the pastry-cook's, which spread themselves insolently within
+reach of the tongue; show to the cats, who, on the steps of the houses,
+provoke us by hideous grimaces, a silent contempt, but one that will not
+forget; and remember that it is lawful and even commendable to chase and
+strangle mice, rats, wild rabbits and, generally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> speaking, all animals
+(we learn to know them by secret marks) that have not yet made their
+peace with mankind.</p>
+
+<p>All this and so much more!... Was it surprising that Pell&eacute;as often
+appeared pensive in the face of those numberless problems, and that his
+humble and gentle look was often so profound and grave, laden with cares
+and full of unreadable questions?</p>
+
+<p>Alas, he did not have time to finish the long and heavy task<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> which
+nature lays upon the instinct that rises in order to approach a brighter
+region.... An ill of a mysterious character, which seems specially to
+punish the only animal that succeeds in leaving the circle in which it
+is born; an indefinite ill that carries off hundreds of intelligent
+little dogs, came to put an end to the destiny and the happy education
+of Pell&eacute;as. And now all those efforts to achieve a little more light;
+all that ardour in loving, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>that courage in understanding; all that
+affectionate gaiety and innocent fawning; all those kind and devoted
+looks, which turned to man to ask for his assistance against unjust
+death; all those flickering gleams which came from the profound abyss of
+a world that is no longer ours; all those nearly human little habits lie
+sadly in the cold ground, under a flowering elder-tree, in a corner of
+the garden.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+<img src="images/illus-045.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>Man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it if he
+considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole
+exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in
+order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable,
+that separate the species! We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance
+planet; and amid all the forms of life that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> surround us, not one,
+excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. A few creatures fear
+us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of
+plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite
+of themselves. They simply endure our laws and our yoke. They are
+impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently
+rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray
+us and return<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> to their former wild and mischievous liberty. The rose
+and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach like the birds.</p>
+
+<p>Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only
+through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven
+horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive
+and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do
+nor where to go,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> but who nevertheless, under the cudgel and the
+pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and
+the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for
+centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted
+sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful
+to the poultry-yard because she finds more maize and wheat there than in
+the neighbouring forest. I do not speak of the cat, to whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> we are
+nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat,
+whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in
+our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all
+the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.
+They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are
+unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness,
+our joy, our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so
+soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is
+with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still
+hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first
+time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a
+momentary and useless accident of the pasture.</p>
+
+<p>For thousands of years, they have been living at our side, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> foreign
+to our thoughts, our affections, our habits as though the least
+fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe. In
+the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures,
+we have succeeded only, by dint of patience, in making them take two or
+three illusory steps. And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward
+us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons
+wherewith to conquer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty
+vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the
+maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun
+the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me
+with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye,
+as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me
+without a thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h3><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h3>
+
+<p>Now, in this indifference and this total want of comprehension in which
+everything that surrounds us lives; in this incommunicable world, where
+everything has its object hermetically contained within itself, where
+every destiny is self-circumscribed, where there exist among the
+creatures no other relations than those of executioners and victims,
+eaters and eaten, where nothing is able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> leave its steel-bound
+sphere, where death alone establishes cruel relations of cause and
+effect between neighbouring lives, where not the smallest sympathy has
+ever made a conscious leap from one species to another, one animal
+alone, among all that breathes upon the earth, has succeeded in breaking
+through the prophetic circle, in escaping from itself to come bounding
+toward us, definitely to cross the enormous zone of darkness, ice and
+silence that isolates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> each category of existence in nature's
+unintelligible plan. This animal, our good familiar dog, simple and
+unsurprising as may to-day appear to us what he has done, in thus
+perceptibly drawing nearer to a world in which he was not born and for
+which he was not destined, has nevertheless performed one of the most
+unusual and improbable acts that we can find in the general history of
+life. When was this recognition of man by beast, this extraordinary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+passage from darkness to light, effected? Did we seek out the poodle,
+the collie, or the mastiff from among the wolves and the jackals, or did
+he come spontaneously to us? We cannot tell. So far as our human annals
+stretch, he is at our side, as at present; but what are human annals in
+comparison with the times of which we have no witness? The fact remains
+that he is there in our houses, as ancient, as rightly placed, as
+perfectly adapted to our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>habits as though he had appeared on this
+earth, such as he now is, at the same time as ourselves. We have not to
+gain his confidence or his friendship: he is born our friend; while his
+eyes are still closed, already he believes in us: even before his birth,
+he has given himself to man. But the word "friend" does not exactly
+depict his affectionate worship. He loves us and reveres us as though we
+had drawn him out of nothing. He is, before all, our creature full<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> of
+gratitude and more devoted than the apple of our eye. He is our intimate
+and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing repels,
+whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair. He has solved, in an
+admirable and touching manner, the terrifying problem which human wisdom
+would have to solve if a divine race came to occupy our globe. He has
+loyally, religiously, irrevocably recognized man's superiority and has
+surrendered himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> to him body and soul, without after-thought,
+without any intention to go back, reserving of his independence, his
+instinct and his character only the small part indispensable to the
+continuation of the life prescribed by nature. With an unquestioning
+certainty, an unconstraint and a simplicity that surprise us a little,
+deeming us better and more powerful than all that exists, he betrays,
+for our benefit, the whole of the animal kingdom to which he belongs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+and, without scruple, denies his race, his kin, his mother and his
+young.</p>
+
+<p>But he loves us not only in his consciousness and his intelligence: the
+very instinct of his race, the entire unconsciousness of his species, it
+appears, think only of us, dream only of being useful to us. To serve us
+better, to adapt himself better to our different needs, he has adopted
+every shape and been able infinitely to vary the faculties, the
+aptitudes which he places at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> our disposal. Is he to aid us in the
+pursuit of game in the plains? His legs lengthen inordinately, his
+muzzle tapers, his lungs widen, he becomes swifter than the deer. Does
+our prey hide under wood? The docile genius of the species, forestalling
+our desires, presents us with the basset, a sort of almost footless
+serpent, which steals into the closest thickets. Do we ask that he
+should drive our flocks? The same compliant genius grants him the
+requisite size, intelligence,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> energy and vigilance. Do we intend him to
+watch and defend our house? His head becomes round and monstrous, in
+order that his jaws may be more powerful, more formidable and more
+tenacious. Are we taking him to the south? His hair grows shorter and
+lighter, so that he may faithfully accompany us under the rays of a
+hotter sun. Are we going up to the north? His feet grow larger, the
+better to tread the snow; his fur thickens, in order that the cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> may
+not compel him to abandon us. Is he intended only for us to play with,
+to amuse the leisure of our eyes, to adorn or enliven the home? He
+clothes himself in a sovereign grace and elegance, he makes himself
+smaller than a doll to sleep on our knees by the fireside, or even
+consents, should our fancy demand it, to appear a little ridiculous to
+please us.</p>
+
+<p>You shall not find, in nature's immense crucible, a single living being
+that has shown a like suppleness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> a similar abundance of forms, the
+same prodigious faculty of accommodation to our wishes. This is because,
+in the world which we know, among the different and primitive geniuses
+that preside over the evolution of the several species, there exists not
+one, excepting that of the dog, that ever gave a thought to the presence
+of man.</p>
+
+<p>It will, perhaps, be said that we have been able to transform almost as
+profoundly some of our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> domestic animals: our hens, our pigeons, our
+ducks, our cats, our horses, our rabbits, for instance. Yes, perhaps;
+although such transformations are not comparable with those undergone by
+the dog and although the kind of service which these animals render us
+remains, so to speak, invariable. In any case, whether this impression
+be purely imaginary or correspond with a reality, it does not appear
+that we feel in these transformations the same unfailing and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> preventing
+good will, the same sagacious and exclusive love. For the rest, it is
+quite possible that the dog, or rather the inaccessible genius of his
+race, troubles scarcely at all about us and that we have merely known
+how to make use of various aptitudes offered by the abundant chances of
+life. It matters not: as we know nothing of the substance of things, we
+must needs cling to appearances; and it is sweet to establish that, at
+least in appearance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> there is on the planet where, like unacknowledged
+kings, we live in solitary state, a being that loves us.</p>
+
+<p>However the case may stand with these appearances, it is none the less
+certain that, in the aggregate of intelligent creatures that have
+rights, duties, a mission and a destiny, the dog is a really privileged
+animal. He occupies in this world a pre-eminent position enviable among
+all. He is the only living being that has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> found and recognizes an
+indubitable, tangible, unexceptionable and definite god. He knows to
+what to devote the best part of himself. He knows to whom above him to
+give himself. He has not to seek for a perfect, superior and infinite
+power in the darkness, amid successive lies, hypotheses and dreams. That
+power is there, before him, and he moves in its light. He knows the
+supreme duties which we all do not know. He has a morality<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> which
+surpasses all that he is able to discover in himself and which he can
+practise without scruple and without fear. He possesses truth in its
+fulness. He has a certain and infinite ideal.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px; padding-top: 1em; padding-bottom: 1em;">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+<img src="images/illus-059.jpg" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr class="major" />
+<h3><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h3>
+
+<p>And it was thus that, the other day, before his illness, I saw my little
+Pell&eacute;as sitting at the foot of my writing-table, his tail carefully
+folded under his paws, his head a little on one side, the better to
+question me, at once attentive and tranquil, as a saint should be in the
+presence of God. He was happy with the happiness which we, perhaps,
+shall never know, since it sprang from the smile and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> approval of a
+life incomparably higher than his own. He was there, studying, drinking
+in all my looks; and he replied to them gravely, as from equal to equal,
+to inform me, no doubt, that, at least through the eyes the most
+immaterial organ that transformed into affectionate intelligence the
+light which we enjoyed, he knew that he was saying to me all that love
+should say. And, when I saw him thus, young, ardent and believing,
+bringing me, in some wise, from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> the depths of unwearied nature, quite
+fresh news of life and trusting and wonderstruck, as though he had been
+the first of his race that came to inaugurate the earth and as though we
+were still in the first days of the world's existence, I envied the
+gladness of his certainty, compared it with the destiny of man, still
+plunging on every side into darkness, and said to myself that the dog
+who meets with a good master is the happier of the two.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck
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