Schwartz: A History | Page 5

and
analysis--our prosperous relatives, who started earlier in the race of life
than we did, and met with better chances.
In spite of airs and graces, natural and acquired, Lil's claims to purity of
race were small, though, like my older acquaintance, Schwartz, she was
more a broken-haired terrier than anything else. Schwartz was simply
and purely bourgeois. He had no airs and no pretensions; but Lil,
whatever her genuine claims may have been, was of another stamp and
fashion.
It was Lil who was the cause of Monsieur Dorn's unbending. The fat
old gendarme was putting her through a set of tricks, which she

executed with complete aplomb and intelligence. There was nothing
violent in these exercises; nothing a dog of the best breeding in the
world could have felt to derogate from dignity. She was much petted
and applauded for her performances, and was rewarded by two or three
lumps of sugar, which she ate without any of the vulgar haste
characteristic of most dogs in their dealings with sweetmeats.
The language of the peasantry hereabouts is that same Walloon tongue
in which old Froissart wrote his Chronicles. It is little more
comprehensible to the average Frenchman than to the average
Englishman, but its vocabulary is restricted, and the people who talk it
have enriched (or corrupted) it with many words of French. When the
loungers in the café began to talk, as they did presently, it amused me
to listen to this unknown tongue; and whenever I heard 'la procession'
named, I enjoyed much the kind of refreshment Mr. Gargery
experienced when he encountered a J.O., Jo, in the course of his
general reading. La procession was not merely the staple of the village
talk, but the warp and woof of it, and any intruding strand of foreign
fancy was cut short at the dips of him who strove to spin it into the web
of conversation. I myself ventured an inquiry or two, for all but the
most ignorant speak French of a sort. Monsieur Dorn accepted a glass
of pequet at my request (a fire-water, for a dose of which one halfpenny
is charged, and upon which the unaccustomed stranger may intoxicate
himself madly at an outlay of five-pence), and the fat and stately old
fellow told me all about the origin and meaning of the pious form the
village was then preparing to fulfil. He made the kindest allowance for
my limited powers of speech, and bounteously fed my native sense of
retiring humility with patronage.
The door of the café was open to the mild, fir-scented December air,
though a crackling fire burnt noisily in the thin-ribbed stove. Lil made
occasional excursions to the open doorway, looking out upon the
passers-by with a keen alertness. She had some time returned from one
of these inspections, and had curled herself at her master's feet, when I
heard a singular and persistent tapping upon the unclothed floor, and
looking round caught sight of my friend Schwartz, who was making a
crouching and timid progress toward us, and was wagging his cropped

tail with such vehemence that it sounded on the boards like a light
hammer on a carpeted flooring. At first I fancied that he recognised me,
and I held out to him an encouraging hand, of which he took no notice.
That air of propitiatory humility which I had seen in him when we had
first encountered on Lorette was exaggerated to a slavish adulation.
There is no living creature but a dog who would not have been ashamed
to show such a mixture of transport and self-depreciation. He fawned,
he writhed, he rapped his tail upon the floor in a sustained crescendo.
The dumb heart had no language for its own delight and humility.
Anybody who takes pleasure in dogs has seen the sort of thing scores
and scores of times. It was the quality of intensity which made it
remarkable in Schwartz.
Lil, for whom this display of joy and humbleness was made, was
altogether unmoved by it. She was not merely regardless of it, but
ostentatiously disdainful. She took a coquettish lady's-maidish amble to
the door, passing Schwartz by the way, and yawned as she looked out
upon the street. Schwartz fawned after her to the door, and with a
second yawn she repassed him, and returned to lie at the feet of the fat
old gendarme. The absurd little drama of coquetry and worship went on
until the old fellow arose with a friendly bon jour, to me, and a whistle
to Lil, who followed him with a supercilious nose in the air. The
despised Schwartz stood a while, and then set out after her at a
ridiculous three-legged run, but before he had gone ten yards he
stopped short, looked after