THE CHASE
The region is rich in game, and so we go a-hunting it. That is to say, Bashan goes hunting and I look on. In this wise we hunt: rabbits, quail, field-mice, moles, ducks and gulls. But we do not by any means fight shy of bigger game; we also track pheasants and even deer—whenever such first-rate quarry—as sometimes happens—strays into our hunting-grounds. This always furnishes an exciting spectacle—when the long-legged, lightly-built animal, the furtive deer, all yellow against the snow and with its white-tufted hindquarters bobbing, goes flying before little old Bashan who is straining every nerve. I follow the course of events with the greatest interest and tension. It is not as if anything were ever to result from this chase, for that has never happened and never will happen. But the lack of tangible results does not in the least diminish either Bashan’s joy or his passion for hunting, nor does it in any way minimise my pleasure. We pursue the chase for its own sake and not for the sake of prey or booty or any other utilitarian purpose.
Bashan, as I have said, is the active member. He does not expect any save a moral support from me, since no personal and immediate experience has taught him a more pronounced and practical manner of co-operation. I lay particular stress upon the words “personal” and “immediate,” for it is more than probable that his ancestors, in so far as they belonged to the tribe of setters, were familiar with more actual methods of hunting. On occasion I have asked myself whether some memory of this might not survive in him and whether this could not be aroused by some accidental impulse. It is certain that on Bashan’s plane of existence the life of the individual is less differentiated from the species than in our case. Birth and death signify a far less profound vacillation of the balance of being; perhaps the inheritances of the blood are more perfectly preserved, so that it would merely be an apparent contradiction to speak of inborn experiences, unconscious memories which, once aroused, would be able to confuse the creature in the matter of its own personal experiences and cause it to be dissatisfied with these. I once courted this thought, but then rid myself of it, just as Bashan had obviously rid himself of the thoughts of the brutal incident of which he had been a witness and which gives me occasion for these deliberations.
When I go forth to hunt with him, it usually chances to be noon—half-past eleven or twelve o’clock—sometimes, especially on very warm summer days, it may even be late afternoon, say six o’clock or later. It may be that this is even our second going-out In any case my mental and spiritual atmosphere is quite different from what it was during our first careless stroll in the morning. The virgin freshness of the early hour has vanished long since. I have worried, and have struggled in the interval with this or that. I have been forced to grit my teeth and overcome one difficulty after the other—I have had a tussle with some person or other. At the same time I have been obliged to keep some diffuse and complicated matter firmly in mind and my head is weary, especially after a successful mastery of the problem. Hence this going a-hunting with Bashan distracts and enlivens me. It infuses me with new life, putting me into condition for the rest of the day and for triumph over the tasks that are still lowering in my path. It is really largely the impulse of gratitude which forces me to describe these hunting trips.
Things, to be sure, are not so neatly arranged that Bashan and I could go forth in pursuit of any one special species of the game which I have mentioned—that we should, for instance, specialise on rabbits or ducks. No, on the contrary, we hunt everything that chances to cross our path—I had almost said that chances to come within range of our guns. We need not go very far in order to strike game. The hunt may literally begin immediately outside the garden gate, for there are great numbers of field-mice and moles in the hollows of the meadows close behind the house. To be exact and sportsmanlike—I am aware that these fur-bearing animals cannot, of course, be regarded as game in the strict sense of the term. But their secret, subterranean habits, especially the nimble craftiness of the mice, which are not blind o’ day like their excavating and tunnelling brethren, and often go gambolling upon the surface, and then when danger approaches go flicking into the little black burrow without one’s being able to distinguish their legs or their movements—these things work tremendously upon Bashan’s hunting instincts. These are also the only animals of the wild which occasionally become his prey—a field-mouse, a mole—these are titbits which are not to be despised in such lean and meagre days as these—when one often finds nothing more palatable than a thick barley soup in the stoneware bowl beside one’s kennel.
I have scarcely taken a dozen steps with my cane along the poplar avenue, and Bashan has, as an overture, scarcely got through with his preliminary leaps and lunges, than he is seen to be performing the most extraordinary capricoles towards the right. He is already gripped by the passion for the chase, and is blind and deaf to all things save the exciting but hidden goings-on of the living things about him. With every nerve taut and tense, waving his tail, carefully lifting his feet, he goes slinking through the grass, sometimes pausing in mid-step, with one foreleg and one hindleg in air, then peering with cocked head into the hollows, an action which causes the flaps of his erected ears to fall forward on both sides of his eyes. And then raising both forepaws, he will suddenly jump forward and will stare with dumbfounded expression at a spot where but a moment before there was something and where now there is nothing. And then he begins to dig. . . .
I feel a strong desire to go to him and await the result, but then we should never be able to leave the spot Bashan would expend his entire stock of joy-in-the-chase right here in this meadow, and this stock is meant to last him for the entire day. And so I walk on—untroubled by any thought that he might not be able to overtake me—even though he should remain behind for a long time without having observed in what direction I had gone. To him my track and trail are as clear as that of a bit of game. Should he have lost sight of me, he is sure, with head lowered between his forepaws, to come tearing along this trail. I hear the clinking of his brass license-tag, his firm gallop behind me—and then he goes shooting past me and turns with wagging tail once more to report himself on duty.
Out yonder, however, in the woods or in the broad meadows alongside the brook, I often halt and watch when I catch him digging for a mouse, even though it should be late and I in danger of exceeding the time I have apportioned for my walk. The passionate devotion with which he goes to work is so fascinating to observe, his profound enthusiasm is so contagious, that I cannot but wish him success with all my heart, and naturally I also wish to be a witness of this success. The spot he is attacking may have made quite an innocent impression in its outward aspect—it is, let us say, some mossy little mound at the foot of a birch and possibly penetrated by its roots. But did not my Bashan hear the quarry, scent it, perhaps even see it as it switched away? He is absolutely certain that his bit of game is sitting there under the earth in some snug runlet or burrow; all that is necessary is to get at it, and so he goes digging away for all he is worth in absolute devotion to his task and oblivious to the world. He proceeds not ragingly, but with a certain fine deliberation, with the tempered passion of the real sportsman—it is wonderful to see. His small, tiger-striped body beneath the smooth coat of which the ribs align themselves and the muscles play, is hollowed, is concave in the middle; his hindquarters, with the stump of a tail vibrating to quick time, is erected vertically. His head is between his forepaws and thrust into the slant hole he has already dug. With averted face he continues with the rapid strokes of his iron claws to tear up the earth more and more—lumps of sod, pebbles, shreds of glass, and bits of roots fly all about me. Sometimes his snortings are heard in the silence of the fields—that is when he has succeeded in penetrating some little distance, and in wedging his snout into the entrance to the burrow in order, by means of his scent, to keep check upon the clever, still, and timid creature within there.
His breathing sounds muffled, he ejects his breath in a blast in order to be able to empty his lungs quickly—and to draw in the delicate, acrid, distant, and yet disguised odour of the mice. What emotions must surge through the breast of the little animal down there when it hears this hollow and muffled snorting? Well, that is its own affair, or perhaps God’s affair, who has decreed that Bashan shall be the enemy and persecutor of these earth-mice. And then—is not fear only an intensified feeling for life? If no Bashan existed the little mouse would very likely be bored to death. And what use or purpose would then be served by its beady-eyed cleverness and its art of swift mining operations, factors that fairly well equalise the conditions of the battle, so that the success of the party upon the offensive always remains highly problematical, even improbable. Indeed I feel no compassion for the mouse; inwardly I take sides with Bashan, and sometimes I cannot remain content with the role of a mere spectator. I get my walking-stick into play whenever some firmly-bedded pebble, some tough cord of a root is in his way and help him to get rid of these obstacles. Then sometimes, in the midst of his hot and furious activity, he will throw up his head and bestow upon me a swift and fervent glance of gratitude and approval. With munching jaws and glinting teeth he goes working his way into the stubborn, fibrous ground,—tears away clods, throws them aside, sends his resonant snorts once more into the depths, and then, fired to renewed action by the provocative scent, sets his claws once more into furious action. . . .
In the great majority of cases this is all love’s labour lost. With the moist earth clinging to his nose and sprinkled about his shoulders, Bashan makes another quick and superficial survey of the territory and then gives it up and jogs indifferently on.
“There was nothing doing, Bashan,” I remark to him, when he chances to look at me. “Nothing doing,” I repeat, shaking my head and raising my brows and my shoulders, so as to make the message plainer. But it is not at all necessary to comfort him; his failure does not depress him for a moment. To hunt is to hunt, the titbit of game is the least of all considerations. It was, take it all in all, a magnificent effort he thinks—in so far as he still happens to think of this violent business he has just been through. For now he is already on new adventure bent—adventures of which there is, indeed, no lack in the three zones of this domain.
Sometimes, however, he happens to catch the mouse. And then something occurs which never fails to strike me with horror—for Bashan devours his prey alive, with hide and hair. Perhaps the unfortunate creature had not been properly advised by its instincts of self-preservation and had chosen a spot for its burrow which was too soft, too unprotected and too easily excavated. Perhaps the little creature’s tunnels had not been sunk deep enough, or it had been paralysed by fright and prevented from burrowing to deeper levels. Or it had perchance lost its head and, crouching a few inches under the surface with its little beady eyes popping out of their sockets with horror, listened to that terrible snorting coming nearer and nearer. No matter, the iron claws disinter it, uncover it, fling it into the air, into the pitiless glare of the day! Hapless little mouse! you had good cause to be frightened, and it is well that this immense and comprehensible fright has already reduced you to a kind of semi-unconsciousness. For now the tiny rodent is to be converted into pap and pulp.
Bashan has caught it by the tail; he tosses it upon the ground twice or thrice; a very faint squeak is heard, the last that is vouchsafed to the god-forsaken little mouse. And then Bashan snaps it up, and it disappears between his jaws and the white, gleaming teeth. He stands there with legs four square and forepaws braced. His neck is lowered and thrust forth as he chews—he catches at the titbit again and again and throws it into the proper position in his mouth. The tiny bones are heard to crack, a shred of fur hangs for a moment from the corner of his mouth; he draws it in and then all is over. Bashan then executes a kind of dance of joy and triumph, circling around me as I stand leaning on my cane with cold shudders rushing up and down my spine. “You’re a fine fellow!” I say to him in a kind of gruesome recognition of his victory. “You scoundrel! you murderer! you cannibal!”
These words cause him to dance still more wildly, and, one might say, almost to laugh aloud. So I proceed on my way, somewhat chilled in the limbs owing to the tragedy I have just witnessed, and yet inwardly enlightened by the brutal humour of life. The thing, after all, is quite in order, in Nature’s order. A mouselet which had been ill-advised by its faulty instincts has simply been converted into pap and pulp. Nevertheless I am inwardly gratified when in such instances as the foregoing, it did not become necessary for me to help along the natural order of things with my cane, but remained a simple and passive spectator.
Startling and even terrifying is it when some pheasant suddenly bursts from the thicket in which, sleeping or waking, it had hoped to remain undiscovered, some coign of concealment from which Bashan’s delicate and unobtrusive nose had after a little searching managed to rouse it. Thumping and flapping, with frightened and indignant cries and cacklings, the large, rust-red and long-tailed bird lifts itself a-wing, and with all the silly heedlessness of a hen, goes scattering upon some tree from which it begins to scold, whilst Bashan, erect against the trunk, barks up at the fowl, stormily, savagely. The meaning behind this barking is clear. It says plainly enough: “Get off! get off that perch! Tend to business. Fly off, so I can have my bit o’ fun. Get off—I want to chase you!” The pheasant cannot, apparently, resist this powerful voice, and off it scuds, making its way with heavy flight through the branches, still cackling and complaining, whilst Bashan, full of manly silence, pursues it smartly along the level ground.
This is sufficient for Bashan’s bliss; his wish and his will go no farther. What would have happened had he caught the bird? Nothing, I assure you, absolutely nothing. I once saw him with a bird between his claws. He had probably come upon it whilst it lay in deep sleep, so that the clumsy thing had had no time to lift itself from the ground. On that occasion Bashan had stood over the fowl, an utterly bewildered victor, and did not know what to do next. With one wing raked wide open and with its head drawn aside to the very limit of its neck, the pheasant lay in the grass and screamed, screamed without a single pause—a passer-by might have thought that some old woman was being murdered in the bushes. I hurried up, bent upon preventing something horrible. But I was soon convinced that there was nothing to fear. Bashan’s all-too conspicuous confusion, the half-curious, half-disgusted mien with which, head aslant, he looked down upon his prisoner, assured me of that. This old wives’ screeching and dinning in his ears, very likely got upon his nerves—the whole affair apparently caused him more embarrassment than triumph. Was it in victory or in shame that he pulled a couple of feathers out of his victim’s dress, very, very cautiously with his mouth, refraining from all use of his teeth, and then threw them aside with an angry toss of his head?
He followed this tribute to his predatory instincts by taking his paw off his victim and letting it go free—not out of magnanimity, to be sure, but simply because the situation bored him, and because it really had nothing in common with the stir and gaiety of the chase. Never had I seen a more astonished bird! It had closed its account with life, and for a brief space it seemed that it no longer knew what use to make of life, for it lay in the grass as though dead. It then tottered along the ground for a bit, swung clumsily upon a tree, appeared about to fall from it, summoned its strength, and then with heavily-dragging feathery raiment went fluttering off into the distance. It no longer squawked, but kept its bill shut. Silently the bird flew across the park, the river, the forest beyond the river, away, away, as far as its short wings could carry it. It is certain that this particular pheasant never returned to this particular spot.
There are, however, a good many of his breed in our hunting-grounds, and Bashan hounds and hunts them in an honourable sportsmanlike manner and according to the rules of the game. The only real blood-guilt that lies heavy upon his head is the devouring of the field-mice, and this, too, appears as something incidental and negligible. It is the scenting-out, the drive, the pursuit, which serve him as a noble end in themselves—all who were able to observe him at this brilliant game would come to the same conclusion. How beautiful he grows, how ideal, how perfect to the end and purpose! It is thus that the awkward and loutish peasant lad of the hills becomes perfect and picturesque when you see him standing amidst the rocks and cliffs as a hunter of the Gemsbock. All that is noble, genuine, and fine in Bashan is driven to the surface and achieves a glorious efflorescence in such hours as these. That is why he pants for these hours with such intensity and why he suffers so poignantly when they pass unused.
Bashan is no toy spaniel; he is the veritable woodsman and pathfinder, such as figure heroically in books. A great joy in himself, in his own existence cries from every one of the martial, masculine, and striking poses which he assumes and which succeed one another with almost cinematographic rapidity. There are few things which are able so to refresh my eyes as the sight of him, as he goes sailing through the underbrush in a light, feathering trot and then suddenly stands at gaze, with one paw daintily raised and bent inward, sagacious, vigilant, impressive, with all his faculties in a radiant intensification. And then amidst all this imposing statuesqueness it is possible that he may give vent to a sudden squeak, or yelp, occasioned, very likely, by having caught his foot in something thorny. But this too, is all in order with the course of nature and with the perfection of the picture—this cheery readiness to be splendidly simple. It is capable of diminishing his dignity only as a breath dims a mirror; the superbness of his carriage is restored the very next moment.
I look upon him—my Bashan—and I am reminded of a time during which he lost all his pride and his gallant poise, and was once more reduced to that condition of bodily and mental dejection in which we first saw him in the kitchen of that tavern in the mountains, and from which he so painfully lifted himself to a faith in his own personality and in life. I do not know what ailed him—he began to bleed from the mouth or the nose or the ears—even to-day I have no clear idea of his particular malady. But wherever he went in those days, he left marks of blood behind him—in the grass of the hunting-grounds, in the straw of his kennel, on the floor of the house when he entered it—and yet there was no external injury anywhere visible. At times his entire nose seemed to be covered with red paint. Whenever he sneezed he would send forth a spray of blood, and then he would step in the drops and leave brick-red impressions of his paws wherever he went. Careful examinations were made, but these led to no results and thus brought about increased anxieties. Were his lungs attacked? or was he afflicted by some mysterious distemper of which we had never heard?—something to which his breed was subject? Since the strange as well as unpleasant phenomena did not cease after some days, it was decided that he must go to the Dog’s Hospital.
Kindly but firmly Bashan’s master imposed upon him on the day following—it was about noon—the leathern muzzle—that mask of stubborn meshes which Bashan loathes above all things and of which he always seeks to rid himself by violent shakings of his head and furious rubbings of his paws. He was fastened to the braided leash and thus harnessed was led up the avenue—on the left-hand side—then through the local park and a suburban street into the group of buildings belonging to the High School. We passed beneath the portal and crossed the courtyard. We then entered a waiting-room, against the walls of which sat a number of persons all of whom, like myself, held a dog on a leash—dogs of different breeds and sizes, who regarded one another with melancholy eyes through their leather muzzles. There was an old and motherly dame with her fat and apoplectic pug, a footman in livery with a tall and snow-white Russian deerhound, who emitted from time to time a dry and aristocratic cough; a countryman with a dachshund—apparently a case for orthopedic science, since all his feet were planted upon his body in the most crooked and distorted manner, and many others. The attendant at this veterinary clinic admitted the patients one after the other into the adjoining consulting-room. At length the door to this was also opened for me and Bashan.
The Professor was a man of advanced age, and was clad in a long, white operating coat. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, his head was crowned with gray curls and his whole manner was so amiable and conveyed such an air of wise kindliness that I would immediately have entrusted myself and my family to him in any emergency. Whilst I gave him my account of things, he smiled paternally upon his patient, who sat there in front of him and turned up to him a pair of humble and trustful eyes.
“He’s got fine eyes,” said the doctor, without allowing Bashan’s hybrid goatee to disturb him, and declared that he was ready to make an investigation at once. Bashan, quite helpless with astonishment, was now, with the aid of the attendant, spread upon the table. It was moving to see how the old doctor applied the stethoscope to the breast of the tiger-striped little manikin and performed his auscultation, just as I had seen it done in my case more than once. He listened to the swift workings of the tiny canine heart, and sounded his entire organic internal functions from different points of his exterior. Hereupon, tucking his stethoscope under his arm, he began to examine Bashan’s eyes with both hands, his nose as well as the roof of his mouth, and then ventured upon delivering a preliminary prognosis.
The dog, said he, was a trifle nervous and anæmic, but otherwise in good condition. It might be epitaksis or hæmathemesis. But it might also be a case of tracheal or pharyngeal hemorrhage—this was by no means precluded. For the present one would be most inclined to call it a case of hæmoptysis. It was necessary to keep the animal under careful observation. I should do best to leave him here and then call and inquire again in the course of a week.
Thus instructed, I expressed my thanks and gave Bashan a farewell pat on the shoulder. I saw how the attendant led Bashan across the courtyard towards the entrance to a building at the rear, and how Bashan, with a bewildered and anxious expression on his face, looked back at me. And yet he should have felt flattered, just as I could not help feeling flattered by hearing the Professor declare him to be nervous and anæmic. No one who had stood at his cradle would ever have imagined that it was written in his horoscope that he was one day to be said to be suffering from two such fashionable ailments, or that Medical Science would be called in to deliberate over him with such gravity and solicitude.
From that day on my walks were to me what unsalted food is to the palate—they gave me little pleasure. No silent tumult of joy burst upon me when I went out—under way no proud, high, mad helter-skelter of the chase surrounded me. The park seemed to me desolate—I was bored. I did not fail to make inquiries by telephone during the interval of waiting. The answer, communicated from some subordinate quarter, was to the effect that the health of the patient was as good as could be expected under the circumstances—circumstances which, for good reasons or for bad, one did not trouble to designate more clearly. As soon as the day arrived on which I had taken Bashan to the veterinary institution, and the week was up, I once more made my way to the place.
Guided by numerous signboards with inscriptions and pointing hands, liberally affixed to walls and doors, I managed, without going astray, to negotiate the door of the clinical department which sheltered Bashan. In accordance with the command upon an enamelled plate on the door, I forbore to knock, and walked in. The rather large room in which I found myself gave me the impression of a wild-beast house in a menagerie. The atmosphere incidental to such a house also prevailed here, with the exception that the odour of the menagerie seemed to be mingled here with all kinds of sweetish medicinal vapours—a cloying and rather disturbing mixture. Cages with bars were set all around the walls, and nearly all of them were occupied. Resolute barks saluted me from one of these. A man, evidently the keeper, was busy with a rake and a shovel before the open door of one of these cages. He was pleased to respond to my greeting without interrupting his work, and then left me for the present entirely to my own impressions.
My first survey of the scene, whilst the door was still open, had at once revealed to me the whereabouts of Bashan, and so I went up to him. He lay behind the bars of his cage upon some loose stuff which must have been made of tan-bark or something similar, and which added its own peculiar aroma to the odour of the animals and of the carbolic acid or lysoform. He lay there like a leopard, though a very weary, very disinterested and disappointed leopard. I was shocked by the sullen indifference with which he greeted my entrance and advance. He merely gave a feeble thump or two upon the floor of his cage with his tail, and only after I had spoken to him did he deign to raise his head from his paws, but only to drop it again almost immediately and to blink moodily to one side. A stoneware vessel full of water stood at the back of his cage. Outside, attached to the bars of his cage, there was a small wooden frame with a card, partly-printed, partly hand-written, which contained an account of Bashan’s name, breed, sex, and age. Beneath this there was a fever-index curve.
“Bastard setter,” I read. Name: Bashan. Male. Two years old. Brought in on such and such a day and month of the year—to be observed for occult hemorrhages. And then followed the curve of Bashan’s temperature, drawn in ink and showing no great variations. There were also details in figures regarding the frequency of Bashan’s pulse. So his temperature was being taken and even his pulse counted—nothing was lacking in this respect. It was his frame of mind which occasioned me worry.
“Is that one yourn?” asked the attendant who, implements in hand, had in the meantime approached me. He was a stocky, round-bearded and red-cheeked man, wearing a kind of gardener’s apron, with brown, somewhat bloodshot eyes, the moist and honest glances of which had something astonishingly dog-like in them.
I answered his question in the affirmative, referred to the order I had received to call again to-day, to the telephone conversations I had carried on, and declared that I had come to see how everything stood. The man cast a glance at the card. Yes, he said, the dog was suffering from occult hemorrhages, and that kind of thing always took a long time—especially if one didn’t know where the hemorrhages came from. Well, wasn’t that always the case? No, one didn’t know anything about it as yet. But the dog was there to be observed and he was being observed. The hemorrhages were still occurring, were they? Yes, they came on now and then. And they were being observed? Yes, most carefully.
“Has he any fever?” I asked, trying to make something out of the chart hanging on the bars. No, no fever. The dog had quite a normal temperature and pulse, about ninety beats in the minute—that was the normal number, that was about right, they ought not to be less, but if they were fewer, then he would have to be observed still more sharply. The dog—if it wasn’t for these here occult hemorrhages, was really in pretty good condition. Of course he had howled at first, a full twenty-four hours, but after that he had got used to things. Of course, he didn’t eat much, but then he got very little exercise, and it was also a question of how much he was accustomed to eat. What food did they give him? Soup, said the man. But as he had already remarked, the dog didn’t eat much of it.
“He has a very depressed look,” I said, affecting an expert air. Yes, no doubt of that, said the man, but then that didn’t really mean much. For it wasn’t very nice for a dog to have to be cooped up in that way and be observed. They were all depressed more or less, that is to say, the good-natured ones, but there were some as got mean and nasty. But he couldn’t say as this here dog had. This dog of mine was a good-natured sort and wouldn’t think of biting—even though one were to observe him till Doomsday. I agreed with what the man said, though indignation and anxiety gnawed at my heart. How long, I asked him, did one think it was necessary to keep Bashan here? The man cast another glance at the chart. Another week, he remarked, would be necessary to observe him properly—that’s what the Professor had said. I might come after another week and inquire again—that would make two weeks in all, and then I would be able to get exact information about the dog and about curing his occult hemorrhages.
I went—after I had made another attempt to cheer up Bashan’s spirits by talking to him. But he was as little affected by my going away as by my coming. He seemed to be oppressed by a feeling of dark hopelessness—and contempt. “Since you have been capable,” his attitude seemed to declare, “of having me put into this cage, I expect nothing more from you.” And was it not in truth enough to make him despair of all reason and justice? What had he done that this should happen to him? How came it that I not only permitted it, but even took the initial steps? I had meant to act well by him. He had begun to bleed from the nose, and though this did not appear to disturb him in any way, I had nevertheless thought it fitting that veterinary science should be consulted, as befitted a dog in good circumstances, and I had also learned that he was rather anæmic and nervous—like the daughter of an earl. How could I know that such a fate awaited him? How could I make him understand that he was having honours and attention bestowed upon him by being locked behind bars—like a jaguar—in being deprived of air, sunshine, and exercise, and instead of being able to enjoy these blessings, tormented with a thermometer day after day?
Such were the questions which I put to myself as I walked home. Whilst I had up to then only missed Bashan, I now began to be afflicted with a positive anxiety for him, for the welfare of his soul, and was forced to contend with doubt and self-accusatory thoughts. After all, was it not mere vanity and egoistic conceit which had induced me to take him to this canine infirmary? Besides, was it not possible, that a secret wish had been the wellspring of this action, a wish to get rid of him for a time, a certain ignoble curiosity to free myself from his incessant watching, and to see how it would feel to be able to turn calmly to the right or to the left without bringing about emotional cataclysms in the animated world without—emotional tempests whether of joy or sorrow, or bitter disillusionment? It was not to be denied—since Bashan’s internment I was enjoying a definite feeling of independence such as I had not known for a long time. When I glanced through the glass door of my study there was no one there to annoy me with the spectacle of his martyrdom of patience. No one came with paw hesitatingly raised, so that, giving way to a burst of pitying laughter, I should be forced to deny my own fixed resolution and go forth earlier than I had intended. No one questioned my right to go into the house or into the park, just as the spirit moved me. This was a comfortable condition of things, quieting and full of the charm of novelty. But as the accustomed incentive was lacking, I almost ceased to go walking at all. My health suffered in consequence, and whilst my condition grew to be remarkably like that of Bashan in his cage, I indulged in the moral reflection that the fetters of sympathy would have been more conducive to my own comfort than the egoistic freedom for which I had panted.
The second week elapsed in good time, and so, on the day appointed, I and the bearded attendant stood once more in front of Bashan’s barred habitation. The inmate lay upon his side, stretched out in a posture of absolute indifference upon the tan-bark of his cage, bits of which flecked his coat. He was staring backward at the chalky wall of his prison with eyes that were glassy and dull. He did not move. His breathing was scarcely perceptible. Only, from time to time, his chest—which displayed every rib—rose in a sob which he breathed forth with a soft and heartrending tremolo of his vocal chords. His legs seemed to have grown too long, his paws huge and unshapely—due to his terrible emaciation. His coat was extremely rough and dishevelled and crushed, and, as already remarked, soiled from wallowing in the tan-bark. He paid no attention to me, and it seemed that he would never again be able to summon up enough energy to take an interest in anything.
The hemorrhages, said the attendant, had not quite disappeared—they still happened now and then. Their origin was not as yet quite clear, but in any case they were of a harmless nature. I was free to leave the dog there for a still longer period of observation—in order to make quite sure—or I might take him home with me, where he would no doubt get rid of the evil—all in good time. I then drew out the plaited leather leash from my pocket and said that I would take Bashan with me. The attendant thought that would be very sensible. He opened the barred door and we both called Bashan by name, alternately and both together—but he did not stir. He merely kept staring at the whitewashed wall opposite. He made no resistance when I thrust my arm into the cage and pulled him out by the collar. He gave a kind of convulsive flounce about and landed on his legs on the floor. There he stood with his tail between his legs, his ears retracted, a very picture of misery.
I picked him up, gave the attendant a tip, and left the ward of this canine hospital. I then proceeded to pay my bill in the office of the institution. This bill, at seventy-five pfennigs a day and the veterinary’s fee for the first examination, amounted to twelve marks, fifty pfennigs. I then led Bashan home, clothed in the stern yet sweetish atmosphere of the clinic which still permeated my companion’s coat.
He was broken in body and in soul. Animals are more unrestrained and primitive, less subject to inhibitions of all kinds, and therefore in a certain sense more human in the physical expression of their moods than we. Forms and figures of speech which survive among us only in a kind of mental or moral translation, or as metaphors, are still true and valid when applied to them. They live up to the expression in the fullest, freshest sense of the term—and in this there is something wonderfully enlivening to the eye. Bashan, as one would say, “let his head hang,” or “had a hang-dog look.” He did actually hang his head—hung it low like some wrack of a wornout cab-horse which, with abscesses on its legs and periodical shivers undulant along its sides, stands at its post with a hundredweight of woe pulling its poor nose, swarming with flies, towards the pavement.
These two weeks, at the veterinary high school, as I have already said, had reduced him to the very condition in which I had first found him in the foot-hills. Perhaps I ought to say that he was only the shadow of himself—if this would not be an insult to the proud and joyous Bashan. The smell of the dog-hospital which he had brought with him, vanished in the wash trays, after several ablutions with soap and hot water—vanished—all save a few floating and rebellious whiffs. A bath may be said to exercise a spiritual influence, may be said to possess a symbolic significance to us human beings—but no one would dare to say that the physical cleansing of poor Bashan, meant the restoration of his customary spirits. I took him to the hunting-grounds on the very first day of his home-coming. But he went slinking at my heels with silly look and lolling tongue, and the pheasants were jubilant over a close season. At home he would remain lying for days as I had last seen him stretched out in his cage at the hospital, and staring with glassy eyes, inwardly limp and without a trace of his wholesome impatience, without making a single attempt to force me to go forth for a walk. On the contrary I was forced to fetch him from his berth at the tiny door of his kennel and to spur him on and up. Even the wild and indiscriminate way in which he wolfed his food, reminded me of his sordid youth.
And then it was a great joy to see how he found himself again, how his greeting gradually took on the old, warm-hearted, playful impetuosity, how, instead of coming towards me with a sullen limp, he would once more come storming upon me in swift response to my morning whistle, so that he might put his forepaws on my chest and snap at my face. It was wonderful to see how the joy in his mere body and in his senses returned to him in the wide spaces and the open air—and to observe those daring and picturesque positions he would assume, those swift plunging pounces with drawn-up feet which he would make upon some tiny creature in the high grass—all these things came back and refreshed my eyes. Bashan began to forget. That hateful incident of his internment, an incident so absolutely senseless from Bashan’s point of view, sank into oblivion, unredeemed, to be sure, unexplained by any clear understanding—something which, after all, would have been impossible. But time swallowed it up and enveloped it, even as time must heal these things where human beings are concerned, and so we went on with our lives as before, whilst the inexpressible thing sank deeper and deeper into forgetfulness. For some weeks longer it happened that Bashan would occasionally sport an incarnadined nose, then the phenomenon vanished, and became a thing of the past. And so, after all, it mattered littl............