In one of the university cities, two dogs also furnished this
spectacle. An order had been issued, that, to avoid any serious
accidents from them, no students' dogs should appear in public except
led in a band. Presently was seen a student with two dogs in cords. The
one was a little pug scarcely two spans high, which was led in a rope
about as thick as a man's arm, whilst the other, a huge and monstrous
creature of the kind which the students call _Doggen_, apparently half
mastiff, half bull-dog, stalked near it, led by a piece of twine.
We still see these creatures made co-workers in many a frolic. At the
dinner table, in the public walk, in the fencing-school, and in the
evening at the Kneip, every where must the dog attend his master. He
must eat with him in the same house; the master, indeed, in the
chamber, the dog in the kitchen; for which repast, however, is allowed
on the dog's behalf two kreutzers a-day. Neither are combats wanting
between them, whereby they may the more resemble their masters, and to
which the masters, in fact, conduct them. In these dog-duels it goes
often much worse than in those of their lords, for they seize each
other so furiously that it is often difficult to separate them.
"The dog," says Linnæus, "remembers not with resentment the blows of
his master." The student's dog is a striking example of the truth of
this remark. How often, when the Bursche returns home from a drinking
company, must this faithful servant do penance for the wild humours of
the evening. It goes not better with him on such occasions than with
many a poor German wife, who yet bears her lot with patience. She still
loves her rough commander, even while he treats her with unmanly
rudeness, and seeks to hide his weaknesses. So this true creature. Is
his lord in danger? he defends him to the last, and often renders him
the most signal services in skirmishes with the Knoten; yea, he
hesitates not to attack the sacred person of the beadle. He is denied
admittance to the duel, because he would speedily, as an uninvited
second, spring between the combatants, and as some assert, on account
of such accidents as the following. A duellist had his nose cut off,
and a large bull-dog which was in the room--perhaps they had forgot to
give him his dinner--greedily swallowed it; so greedily, that it was
impossible to prevent it! Whether the unnosed Bursche had a new one
made for him by Geheimrath Gräfe, or whether he afterwards wore a
silver one, I am not prepared to say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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