“Good Heavens, she is going to bark and give the alarm...!” Not at all. She looked at me without fear or wrath--with eyes, the memory of which will always be with me--then shaking her great shaggy head, she began to groan gently, making a vague gesture with her paw, then she resumed her round, still murmuring, and casting furtive glances in my direction, as if she desired to make herself understood without drawing the attention of the Germans. (This, of course, is a mere descriptive phrase, but one might, all the same, have imagined that the creature wanted to speak, so human were the inflections of her moans, which roughly formed a long, gutteral and monotonous phrase, in which there always occurred the syllables, “Mabet, Mabet.” The whole thing made a gurgling sound, rather like English words badly articulated.) The entry on the scene of the three assistants put a stop to this curious phenomenon. They crossed the courtyard, and all the dogs--Nell at the head--slunk to shelter. Wilhelm, as he passed, flung over the grating of the kennel a chunk of meat--the body of the monkey, skinned, the hairy part hanging attached. It fell heavily. It was dead! The Germans then went into the building on the right, whose chimney was smoking. Then, one by one, the dogs came and sniffed at the remains of the chimpanzee. The bulldog gave the first bite, and then came the whole pack, growling ferociously. The muzzles of the lame ones were soon dyed red, as their gnashing teeth tore to bits this pitiful caricature of a child’s body. Nell, only, in front of her kennel, with her paws crossed, disdained the feast, and looked at me with her beautiful eyes. I fancied I had discovered why she was so thin. Upon this, a window opened, through which I perceived a table set for three. The assistants were going to lunch in front of my wood. It was time for me to withdraw. Here I committed an unpardonable piece of folly. I ought to have set out on my campaign against the old shoe--that was elementary. It appeared to me, wrongly, that I had made a supreme concession to prudence--that an elastic boot has many titles to be considered merely an elastic boot, and not a buried man--not even a buried body; and that, to a generous heart a pretty girl is more important than all knickknacks. I reviewed all these reasons, with the result that I turned towards the _château_. * * * * *