Henry III. of France was never happy unless a whole kennel of puppies yelped at his heels; and Dumas has given an amusing sketch of his Majesty as he travelled with his fool Chicot in the same litter drawn by half-a-dozen mules. “The litter,” he writes, “contained Henry, his physician, his chaplain, the jester, four of the King’s minions, a couple of huge hounds, and a basketful of puppies, which rested on the King’s knees, but which was upheld from his neck by a gold chain. From the roof hung a gilded cage, in which there were white turtle-doves, the plumage of their necks marked by a sable circlet of feathers. Occasionally two or three apes were to be seen in this ‘Noah’s Ark,’ as it was called.” Henry IV. was fond of dogs, and when King of Navarre, was found one day in his cabinet by his great minister, Sully, with his sword by his side, his cloak on his shoulders, carrying in a basket suspended from his neck two or three little pugs. Even in his sports, one of the early exploits of Louis XV. gives a painful impression of his wanton character. He had a pet white doe at Versailles, at which one day he fired in mere mischievousness. The poor creature came wounded towards him and licked his Majesty’s hand, but the young King drove it away from him, and shot it again and again till it died. Alfred de Musset’s dislike of dogs was intensified by unfortunate experience, for more than once a dog had nearly wrecked his prospects, one occasion being when at a royal hunting-party he blunderingly shot Louis Philippe’s favourite pointer. To Goethe, too, dogs were an abhorrence, and a story is told of the poet’s troubles as theatrical manager at Weimar, when the cabal against him had craftily persuaded the Duke Carl August--whose fondness for dogs was as remarkable as Goethe’s aversion to them--to invite to his capital Karsten and his poodle, which had been performing at Paris the leading part in the melodrama of “The Dog of Montargis.” But Goethe indignantly replied, “One of our theatre regulations stands, ‘No dogs admitted on the stage,’” and dismissed the subject. But the invitation had already gone, and the dog arrived. After the first rehearsal Goethe gave his Highness the choice between the dog and his Highness’s then stage manager; whereupon the Duke, angry at his opposition, sent a most offensive letter of dismissal. He quickly regretted the act, and wrote to Goethe, whom no entreaty could ever induce to resume his post. CHAPTER XVI ROYAL JOKES AND HUMOUR