really mad? And he uttered a
queer laugh. There was his black dog--the black dog off his shoulders,
the black dog which rode him, yea, which had become his very self, just
going to wade in! And he called out:

"_He! le copain!_" It was not his dog, for it stopped drinking, tucked
its tail in, and cowered at the sound of his voice. Then it came from
the water, and sat down on its base among the stones, and looked at him.
A real dog was it? What a guy! What a thin wretch of a little black dog!
It sat and stared--a mongrel who might once have been pretty. It stared
at Jean Liotard with the pathetic gaze of a dog so thin and hungry that
it earnestly desires to go to men and get fed once more, but has been so
kicked and beaten that it dare not. It seemed held in suspense by the
equal overmastering impulses, fear and hunger. And Jean Liotard stared
back. The lost, as it were despairing look of the dog began to penetrate
his brain. He held out his hand and said: "_Viens!_" But at the sound
the little dog only squirmed away a few paces, then again sat down, and
resumed its stare. Again Jean Liotard uttered that queer laugh. If the
good God were to hold out his hand and say to him: "_Viens!_" he would
do exactly as that little beast; he would not come, not he! What was he
too but a starved and beaten dog--a driven wretch, kicked to hell! And
again, as if experimenting with himself, he held out his hand and said:
"Viens!" and again the beast squirmed a little further away, and again
sat down and stared. Jean Liotard lost patience. His head drooped till
his forehead touched the ground. He smelt the parched herbs, and a faint
sensation of comfort stole through his nerves. He lay unmoving, trying
to fancy himself dead and out of it all. The hum of summer, the smell of
grasses, the caress of the breeze going over! He pressed the palms of
his outstretched hands on the warm soil, as one might on a woman's
breast. If only it were really death, how much better than life in this
butcher's shop! But death, his death was waiting for him away over
there, under the moaning shells, under the whining bullets, at the end
of a steel prong--a mangled, foetid death. Death--his death, had no
sweet scent, and no caress--save the kisses of rats and crows. Life and
Death what were they? Nothing but the preying of creatures the one on
the other--nothing but that; and love, the blind instinct which made
these birds and beasts of prey. _Bon sang de bon sa