small pension, including the yearly sum to which his cross entitled him,
had been forestalled and mortgaged to pay the petty debts which, relying
on his dividend from the banker, he had innocently incurred. The dog's
owner had been gone for months; his return might be daily expected.
Meanwhile the dog was at the hearth, but the wolf at the door. Now, this
sagacious animal had been taught to perform the duties of messenger and
major-domo. At stated intervals he applied to his master for sous, and
brought back the supplies which the sous purchased. He now, as usual,
came to the table for the accustomed coin--the last sou was gone,--the
dog's occupation was at an end. But could not the dog be sold?
Impossible: it was the property of another,--a sacred deposit; one would
be as bad as the fraudulent banker if one could apply to one's own
necessities the property one holds in trust. These little biographical
particulars came out in that sort of bitter and pathetic humour which a
study of Shakspeare, or the experience of actual life, had taught the
Comedian to be a natural relief to an intense sorrow. The dog meanwhile
aided the narrative by his by-play. Still intent upon the sous, he
thrust his nose into his master's pockets; he appealed touchingly to the
child, and finally put back his head and vented his emotion in a
lugubrious and elegiacal howl. Suddenly there is heard without the sound
of a showman's tin trumpet! Whether the actor had got some obliging
person to perform on that instrument, or whether, as more likely, it was
but a trick of ventriloquism, we leave to conjecture. At that note, an
idea seemed to seize the dog. He ran first to his master, who was on the
threshold about to depart; pulled him back into the centre of the room:
next he ran to the child, dragging her towards the same spot, though with
great tenderness, and then, uttering a joyous bark, he raised himself on
his hind legs and, with incomparable solemnity, performed a minuet step!
The child catches the idea from the dog. Was he not more worth seeing
than the puppet-show in the streets? might not people give money to see