Schwartz: A History | Page 6

the retreating fair in silence, and then
walked off with a dispirited aspect in the opposite direction.
So far as I could tell, my shadowy enemy with the axe had taken
himself away for good and all, but I was so fearful of recalling him that
I kept altogether idle, and in other respects nursed and coddled myself
with a constant assiduity. But it is a hard thing for a man who has
accustomed himself to constant mental employment to go without it,
and in the absence of pens, ink, and paper, books and journals, the
procession bade fair to be a perfect godsend. Even when the inhabitants
of the village took to rising at four o'clock in the morning, and
fanfaronaded with ill-blown bugles, and flaring torches, and a dreadful
untiring drum about the street, I forbore to grumble, and when on

Sundays they turned out in a body after mass to see their own military
section drilled in the Place of the Hotel de Ville, one bored
valetudinarian welcomed them heartily. The military section had got
down uniforms from one of the Brussels theatres,--busbies and helmets,
and the gloriously comic hats of the garde civile,--dragoon tunics,
hussar jackets, infantry shell-jackets, cavalry stable-jackets, foresters'
boots, dragoon jack-boots, stage piratical boots with wide tops to fit the
thigh that drooped about the ankles,--trousers of every sort, from blue
broadcloth, gold-striped, to the homely fustian,--and a rare show they
made. They went fours right or fours left with a fine military jangle,
and sometimes went fours right and fours left at the same time, with
results disastrous to military order. Then it was good to see and hear the
fat Dorn as he caracoled in a field-marshal's uniform, and barked his
orders at the disordered crowd like a field-marshal to the manner born.
Monsieur Dorn being thus gloriously lifted into the range of the public
eye, Lil seemed to take added airs of importance. I say seemed, but that
is only because of the foolish and ignorant habit into which I was born
and educated. Ever since I can remember, people have been telling
stories to prove that dogs have some sort of intelligence, as if--except
to the most stupid and the blindest--the thing had ever stood in need of
proof. There is nothing much more fatal to the apprehension of a fact
than the constant causeless repetition of it. And then the tales of the
intelligence of dogs are told as a general thing with a sort of wide-eyed
wonder, so that the dog's very advocates contrive to impress their
readers with the belief that their commonplace bit of history is
remarkable.
Of course there are clever dogs and dull dogs, just as there are sages
and idiots, but any dog who was not a fool would have known and
recognised his master's splendour and importance if he had belonged at
this epoch to Monsieur Dorn. Lil saw him sitting up there in vivid
colours, heard him shouting in a voice of authority, and saw people
answer to that voice There was not a Christian in the crowd who had a
better understanding of the situation. To see her running in and out
amongst the horses' feet, ordering the sham dragoons and hussars about
in her own language, was to know she understood the thing, and had

invested herself with some of her master's glory. Wherever she went, in
and out and about, Schwartz, with his meek spikes raging in all
directions, followed, close at heel. Almost everybody has seen the loud
aggressive swaggering boy with the meek admiring small boy in his
train. The small boy glorifies the other in his mind, setting him on a
level with Three-Fingered Jack, or Goliath's conqueror, and the
aggressive boy, feeling rather than understanding the other's reverence,
does his best to look as if he deserved it. To see Lil swagger and to hear
her bark, and to see the foolish humble Schwartz follow her, admiring
her, believing in her, utterly borne away by her insolent pretence that
the whole show was got up by her orders--to observe this was to see
one half the world in little.
On other days Lil was as other dogs, except, perhaps, to the
love-blinded eyes of Schwartz, but on Sundays, so long as the drills for
the procession lasted, the field was all her own. One or two of her
companions, carried away by her example, dared to run amongst the
horses' feet and bark. They were promptly kicked into the ring of
spectators, and Lil was left alone in her glory. Of course it all went with
his own confiding nature, and the state of complete slavery in which he
lived, to persuade Schwartz of her greatness. She deserves at least that
one truth should be