No dainty could tempt us to eat. No plaything gave amusement. Drums and trumpets even, failed to rouse us from our melancholy. Among the things most mourned over was a dog named Cagnotte who had necessarily been left behind. His absence produced such wretchedness that, one morning, after having thrown out of window our tin soldiers, a German village painted in gaudy colors, and our reddest of red fiddles, we were on the point of following by the same road in hopes of finding the sooner Tarbes, Gascony and Cagnotte, and were only dragged back in the very nick of time by the collar of our jacket. The happy thought occurred to Josephine, our nurse, to tell us that Cagnotte, impatient at being separated from us, was coming to Paris that very day in the diligence. Children accept the incredible with an artless faith; nothing seems impossible to their minds; but it is dangerous to deceive them, for once their opinions are formed the attempt to alter them is hopeless. All that day long we asked every quarter of an hour if Cagnotte had not come yet. At last, to pacify us, Josephine went out and bought on the _Pont Neuf_ a little dog who somewhat resembled the dog of Tarbes. At first we were mistrustful, and would not believe him to be the same; but we were assured that travelling produces strange changes in the looks of dogs. This explanation was satisfactory, and the dog of the Pont Neuf was received as the authentic Cagnotte. He was an amiable dog, gentle and pretty. He licked our cheeks amicably, and his tongue condescended to stretch farther and extend itself to the bread-and-butter which had been cut for our luncheon. The best understanding existed between us. In spite of this, the false Cagnotte little by little became sad, dull, and constrained in his motions. He no longer curled himself up easily for a nap; all his joyous agility vanished; he panted for breath, and ate nothing. One day, when caressing him, we discovered on his stomach what appeared to be a seam, tightly stretched as if swollen. The nurse was called; she came, she cut a thread with the scissors, and lo! Cagnotte, emerging from a sort of jacket of curly lamb’s-wool with which the dealers on the Pont Neuf had invested him in order that he might pass for a poodle, stood revealed in all his poverty and ugliness as a common street cur, ill-bred and valueless. He had grown fat, and his tight garments were suffocating him. Relieved from his cuirass, he shook his ears, stretched his legs, and gambolled joyfully round the room, not at all disquieted at his own ugliness, now that he once more found himself at ease. His appetite came back, and in his moral qualities we found compensation for his loss of good looks. In the companionship of Cagnotte, who was a true child of Paris, we forgot by slow degrees Tarbes and the high mountains which we had been used to see from our windows. We learned French, and we also became Parisian.