Page:My household of pets (IA myhouseholdofpet00gautiala).pdf/80

 any more than ourselves, this gaze which seems to assimilate a man's most secret thoughts. He would drive the poor animals away, and say to them "You have done your best: you shall not devour my identity."

The Pharamond of our canine dynasty was named Luther. He was a large white pointer with red spots, and handsome brown ears, who, having lost his master, and searched after him vainly for a long time, domesticated himself in the house of our parents, who then lived at Passy. Having no partridges to hunt he gave himself up to the pursuit of rats, in which pursuit he became as proficient as a Scotch terrier. At that time we were living in a room in that blind alley of Doyennè, no longer in existence, where Gérard de Nerval, Arséne Houssaye, and Camille Rogier had established themselves as the centres of a picturesque little Bohemian circle of