nearly human little habits lie
sadly in the cold ground, under a flowering elder-tree, in a corner of
the garden.

II

Man loves the dog, but how much more ought he to love it if he
considered, in the inflexible harmony of the laws of nature, the sole
exception, which is that love of a being that succeeds in piercing, in
order to draw closer to us, the partitions, every elsewhere impermeable,
that separate the species! We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance
planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one,
excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us. A few creatures fear
us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of
plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves; but they serve us in spite
of themselves. They simply endure our laws and our yoke. They are
impotent prisoners, victims incapable of escaping, but silently
rebellious; and, so soon as we lose sight of them, they hasten to betray
us and return to their former wild and mischievous liberty. The rose
and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach like the birds.

Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only
through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven
horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing; the passive
and dejected ass, who stays with us only because he knows not what to do
nor where to go, but who nevertheless, under the cudgel and the
pack-saddle, retains the idea that lurks behind his ears; the cow and
the ox, happy so long as they are eating, and docile because, for
centuries, they have not had a thought of their own; the affrighted
sheep, who knows no other master than terror; the hen, who is faithful
to the poultry-yard because she finds more maize and wheat there than in
the neighbouring forest. I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are
nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat,
whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in
our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all
the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.
They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are
unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness,
our joy, our smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so
soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is
with the distrustful bewilderment of the h