Page:Cuthbert Bede--Little Mr Bouncer and Tales of College Life.djvu/214

194 a funny little foreigner; and he thought that it might prove a great joke to introduce Alphonse to Huz and Buz. It appeared, moreover, that Alphonse was a poodle of intelligence as well as friendliness; for he sat up on his hind legs before Mr. Bouncer, wagged his tail, cocked his head knowingly on one side, and was evidently prepared, on the slightest invitation, to display all the tricks that he had acquired. But a few words from his master, informing Alphonse that he was a nuisance, a pig, and a camel for thus intruding himself upon a strange gentleman, had the immediate effect of depressing that sagacious animal's spirits, and bringing him once again to his normal position. So, Alphonse, resuming the use of his four legs, trotted round the counter to Madame, who talked to him in her native tongue.

Mr. Bouncer was very much struck with this circumstance. The poodle knew French; and he himself, was ignorant of that language! Was this to be accepted as a sarcasm on the curriculum of education that obtained at the schools and colleges of his native land? Mr. Bouncer merely gave this question a fleeting thought, and then dismissed it from his mind. Yet, the fact of the canine intelligence of Alphonse appeared to him to surpass the case of Sterne's Sentimental Traveller, who, on first landing on French ground, was so much astonished to find that even little common children could speak French. Albert Smith, too, in his "Overland Mail" entertainment, confessed that the same thought had passed through his own mind; and that he was unable to repress a feeling of surprise at hearing the peasant children fluently conversing in a language that we, in England, commonly associated with ideas of refinement and education. Such a circumstance is, indeed, a