Chapter I

Have you ever noticed the melancholy pensive look masterless dogs assume at the hour when the press thins, and the passers-by slacken their pace on the side-walks, like waters from a tap running dry?

As the silence deepens they appear from every side, these poor, friendless beasts, their meagre forms slinking through the fog and gloom; up and down the streets they prowl, noses to the ground, and tails drooping, like so many lost souls. Some have sound legs to run on, others can hardly drag themselves along; but all have hollow flanks and protruding ribs. They are out in search of food, nosing in the refuse heaps, scratching in the mud, filching from the scavengers bones as fleshless as themselves.

What the world lets fall from its table is still a banquet for their starving bellies. They are not hard to please; till the wan light of dawn surprises them, they hunt the streets, rain-soaked and frost-bitten; then they creep back into mysterious holes and corners, where they curl themselves up in a round and sleep away the livelong day.

Most of them are wild and shy, for they have only known the blackest side of life—cuffs and kicks, wretchedness and desertion. For them no hope survives the shipwreck of friendships betrayed; alone they live and alone they creep into a hole to die—creatures of the dunghill whose obsequies will be performed by the scavenger’s cart.

But if some are discouraged and disillusioned, there are bolder spirits too who will sometimes, when they hear the steps of a belated wayfarer, tear themselves from the heap they are foraging in and stand panting and eager in the dark street, with the desperate eye of a swimmer looking out across the raging foam in search of a port of safety. Hope is not yet dead in _them_; they still have faith in mankind, and each shadowy form that emerges in the light of the gas-lamps entices them as offering promise of a home. For hours they will trot, with a humble, gentle, deprecating gait, at the heels of a casual passer-by, a shadow among shadows, dogging his steps to the last, hoping against hope. It is a _friend_ they are fain to run to earth; but alas! the chase is one that is repeated night after night—and it is almost always unsuccessful. More often than not, the pursued has no inkling even of the dumb escort that attends him through the night.

How _should_ he know? Behind his back the dog treads noiselessly, with paws of velvet and nose to earth, checking his pace when the stranger slackens his, stopping when he stops, bit by bit learning his walk and ways. At last, when he has journeyed far through the dark streets, when his legs ache with pursuing under the wayfarer’s form a dream that is never to come true, a door will interpose, a ponderous, an impassable barrier between him and his fond hopes. Yet, who can tell? perhaps he will still linger on, shivering, till daylight, so unconquerable is his faith in man.

It was one of these hopeful but unappreciated souls that encountered an old schoolmaster one night, when the latter had tarried late in the fields outside the fortifications, anxious to assist at the noble spectacle the sun gives gratuitously to one and all, as he sets in the glowing west.

He was returning by the boulevards, his heart full of these glories no fireworks have ever yet been invented to match; as he jogged along, he was thinking of God’s goodness, who every night lights up these ruddy lamps of the sky to make fine flame-coloured curtains for the slumbers of His creatures.

A little black dog, the ugliest little dog you ever saw, without ears and without a tail, or as good as without, saw the solitary stranger. Did he divine perhaps beneath the man’s easy, good-natured exterior a fellow-sufferer, the heart of a disappointed, disillusioned being like himself? Sometimes animals can see very far into things.

At any rate he started off in pursuit.

The stranger noticed nothing, but marched along, striding over gutters and stamping across pavements, knocking sometimes against benches and trees in his preoccupation. It had been raining for an hour past, as it does come down in spring, in floods of warm soaking rain and sudden showers that wetted man and dog to the skin, without either one or the other being much disturbed.

Absent-minded as he was, the old man presently felt something rubbing softly against his leg, and, looking down, was surprised to see the wretched-looking cur beside him.

It was crawling and cringing, and with little half-stifled barks seemed to be appealing to the generosity of this unknown friend, perhaps less hard-hearted than the generality of mankind.

Many people, seeing what a hideous beast it was, would have said “No, no!” at once. But it was just the creature’s hideousness that moved the worthy man’s pity irresistibly. Touched by its repulsive looks, he guessed at the pitiful hardships the wretched animal must have borne in secret. He saw its sunken flanks, its mangy coat, its sharp-ridged back, and loved it with a sudden ardour of affection—the affection poor suffering folks feel for one another. All very well for happy people to test and try one another for ever so long to see if they suit each other, but they who have nothing to lose by mutual affection make no bones about clapping hand in hand straight away and swearing eternal friendship.

And so it was with these two new comrades.

Both were poor, and they fraternised at once. The dog was enchanted to have met a kind stranger to help him in his need, while his benefactor thought to himself how pleasant it would be to have the faithful creature to share his solitude. He stooped, patted the animal’s streaming coat, tickled his ear, or as much of it as there was to tickle, and ended by taking him home to his garret.

It was many a day since the poor beast had known the comfort of four walls and a roof—if indeed he ever had! For two whole days, barring meal times, he slept like a log; on the third he roused himself from his lethargy, trotted up and down the room, poked his nose into every corner, and showed every sign of being wide awake at last.

The dog must have a name, and the good schoolmaster was not long in finding one. Azor and Faithful are names that never come amiss for poor folk’s dogs; he chose Azor, perhaps keeping Faithful for himself—and he well deserved it! He had only to move his lips, pronouncing the two syllables “Az-or” below his breath, and the dog was instantly on the alert, looking up at him with roguish eyes, wondering what he was going to say next. No doubt of it, he was a very intelligent animal.

It was a happy household. Not that bread was over and above plentiful; but people who have nothing are cheaply satisfied, and if stomachs were pinched some days, at any rate hearts were never chilled. The dog had come into the man’s life like a special providence; henceforth his existence had an object; he had some one to love, some one besides himself to think of; poverty, so heavy a burden for a lonely man, seemed almost a boon now there were two to bear it—like a load of which each carries his half.

He loved and indulged him like a child, and something of selfishness entering into all ardent affections, Azor soon came to represent all humanity in his eyes. One day, to make him look fine, he fastened in the coarse hair of his neck a pink bow a young girl had dropped in the street, and told himself the dog was the handsomest beast alive. Slender greyhound, fleet-footed pointer, sturdy Newfoundland, none were a patch, in the eye of this partial judge, on the little ragged-haired, undersized mongrel he had introduced to his hearth and home.

Azor had just as great an admiration for his master. Sitting up on his haunches in front of him, he would gaze into his face for hours together in a sort of ecstasy.

Did he see him transmuted into something other than he was, or did the rough face, scored with its network of heavy wrinkles, from amid which the nose shone like a beacon-fire, embody for the wee doggie the beau-ideal of manly beauty? For my part, I think Azor beheld in it a beauty of a higher sort than the perishable beauty of the features; the old man, to be sure, was goodness incarnate, and is not goodness the highest form of beauty?

They lived for one another. Azor yapped, and the old man talked, and between them they had wonderful fine dialogues; beginning in the garret, these were resumed in the street the days they took the air together.

The pair might be seen marching side by side, the old man laughing, the dog laughing, too, in a way he had of his own. And so they wandered through the streets, in search of quiet, both taking little short steps. True, Azor was young still, and would have liked to dart on ahead; but his friend could not have kept up, and that was quite enough to make him adopt the peaceful gait of a dog who has ceased to care for the distractions of the roadside.

But out in the fields you may be sure this sedateness was exchanged for wild excitement. Intoxicated by the open air, Azor would dash away, gambolling and wheeling and leaping like a mad creature, and performing a hundred tricks that mightily amused his good old master.