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?