The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Friend the Dog, by Maurice Maeterlinck

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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

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[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