th soft words. At last, he was within reach of my hands, and I gently
and very carefully stroked him.

"He gained courage, gradually rose and, placing his paws on my
shoulders, began to lick my face. He followed me to the house.

"This was really the first being I had passionately loved, because
he returned my affection. My attachment to this animal was certainly
exaggerated and ridiculous. It seemed to me in a confused sort of way
that we were two brothers, lost on this earth, and therefore isolated
and without defense, one as well as the other. He never again quitted my
side. He slept at the foot of my bed, ate at the table in spite of the
objections of my parents, and followed me in my solitary walks.

"I often stopped at the side of a ditch, and sat down in the grass. Sam
immediately rushed up, lay down at my feet, and lifted up my hand with
his muzzle that I might caress him.

"One day toward the end of June, as we were on the road from
Saint-Pierre de Chavrol, I saw the diligence from Pavereau coming along.
Its four horses were going at a gallop, with its yellow body, and its
imperial with the black leather hood. The coachman cracked his whip;
a cloud of dust rose up under the wheels of the heavy vehicle, then
floated behind, just as a cloud would do.

"Suddenly, as the vehicle came close to me, Sam, perhaps frightened by
the noise and wishing to join me, jumped in front of it. A horse's
hoof knocked him down. I saw him roll over, turn round, fall back again
beneath the horses' feet, then the coach gave two jolts, and behind it
I saw something quivering in the dust on the road. He was nearly cut in
two; all his intestines were hanging out and blood was spurting from the
wound. He tried to get up, to walk, but he could only move his two front
paws, and scratch the ground with them, as if to make a hole. The two
others were already dead. And he howled dreadfully, mad with pain.

"He died in a few minutes. I cannot describe how much I felt and
suffered. I was confined to my room for a month.

"One night, my father, enraged at seeing me so affected by such a
trifling occurrence, exclaimed:

"'How will it be when you have real griefs--if you lose your wife or
children?'

"His words haunted me and I began to see my condition clearly. I
understood why all the small miseries of each day assumed in my eyes the
importance of a catastrophe; I saw that I was organized in such a
way that I suffered dreadfully from ev