d me not to be afraid. He would not harm me.

"Just try and pat him on the back," said Tchitchick to me. And without
waiting, took hold of my hand and drew it all over the dog's skin. At
the same time calling him many curious names and speaking kind words to
him.

The black villain lowered his head, wagged his tail and licked himself
with his tongue. He threw at me a glance of contempt. As if he would
say, "It's lucky for you that my master is standing beside you.
Otherwise you would have gone from here without a hand."

I got over my terror of the dog. I entered the house with Mr. Sargeant
and I was struck dumb with astonishment. All the walls were covered with
guns. From top to bottom. And on the floor lay a skin with the head of a
lion or a leopard. It had terribly sharp teeth. But the lion was half an
evil. After all, it was dead. But the guns. The guns! I did not even
care about the fresh plums and the apples which the master of the house
offered me out of his own garden. My eyes did not cease leaping from one
wall to the other.... But later on, when Tchitchick took a little fiddle
out of a red drawer--a beautiful, round little fiddle, with a curious
little belly, let his big spreading beard droop over it, and held it
with his big strong hands, and drew the bow across the strings a few
times, backwards and forwards, I forgot, in the blinking of an eye, the
black dog and the terrible lion, and the loaded guns. I only saw before
me Tchitchick's spreading beard and his black, lowered eyebrows. I only
saw a round little fiddle with a curious little belly, and fingers which
danced over the strings so rapidly that no human brain could answer the
questions which arose to my mind: "Where does one get so many fingers?"

Presently, Tchitchick and his spreading beard, vanished, along with his
thick eyebrows and his wonderful fingers. And I saw nothing at all
before me. I only heard a singing, a groaning, a weeping, a sobbing, a
talking, and a growling. They were extraordinary, peculiar sounds that I
heard, the like of which I had never heard before, in all my life.
Sounds sweet as honey, and smooth as oil were pouring themselves right
into my heart, without ceasing. And my soul went off somewhere far from
the little house, into another world, into a Garden of Eden which was
nothing else but beautiful sounds--which was one mass of singing, from
beginning to end....

"Do you want some tea?" asked Tchitchick of me, putting d