tas or rippling fountains of
lace--ghosts of victorias and barouches and tandems--ghosts of spotted
streaks of lightning bounding forward with the grace of cats and the
speed of Derby winners, capering with fastidious frivolity between
yellow wheels.

Dalmatians, console yourselves, you are in good company. Beside you
walks the ghost of civilisation herself--surrounded by the phantom forms
of courtesy and leisure and all the lost company of the divine
superfluous.

Cause and effect, demand and supply, where does the vicious circle begin
and end? Certain it is that when motors began to drench the countryside
in dust and suppress reflexion by providing our afterthoughts with
transport, Dalmatians disappeared. Silently, imperceptibly, putting down
their paws with all the old fastidious grace, they crept out of a world
that had betrayed aristocracy. Only Fido remained--to die of a broken
heart.

When I first saw him, he was a puppy--a thin lanky puppy, waiting to be
filled in by life, a mere sketch of the masterpiece he was to become.
Even in those days he had heavy black charmeuse ears, marvellous thick
rich satin they were, and tiny dark rims to his eyes--a setting of
pencilled shadow. How am I to describe his spots? The wonderful
distribution of black and white, the ruffle at the side of his arched
neck made by the meeting of two competitive rhythms of hairs, the
looseness of his skin, his long lithe legs that would tie themselves
into a tangled heap of grace when he lay down.

To see him move was to see motion made concrete--to see him run was to
realise that even Pavlova had never quite overcome the obstacle of being
a human.

At night he seemed phosphorescent, the dark itself was defeated by his
whiteness. His bark was low and deep and resonant--a church bell of a
bark--it reminded [Transcriber's note: original reads 'remainded'] you
less of a 'cello than all 'cellos--except M. Casal's--remind you of a
bark.

He had the divine irrelevant grace of a cat. Always he was showing off,
practising his paws, curling and stretching and pirouetting, letting
himself go like an arrow out of a bow, circling on the lawn like a
swallow above water, giving you daily a thousand illustrations of how
much you would have lost by only having 100 masterpieces in bronze of
him.

Living with Fido was a daily revelation of absolute beauty. He was the
key to the secret of Phidias and Ucello Pascal and Mozart.

But he was alive, war