Mademoiselle Cocotte
We were about to leave the asylum when I noticed in a corner of the courtyard a tall, thin man, obstinately going through the motions of calling an imaginary dog. He would call out, in sweet, tender tones: “Cocotte, my little Cocotte, come here, Cocotte, come here, my beauty,” striking his leg, as one does to attract the attention of an animal. I said to the doctor:
“What is the matter with him?”
He replied:
“Oh, that is not an interesting case. He is a coachman called François, who went mad after drowning his dog.”
I insisted:
“Do tell me his story. The most simple and humble things sometimes strike most to our hearts.”
And here is the adventure of this man, which became known through a groom, his comrade.
In the suburbs of Paris lived a rich, middle-class family. They lived in a fashionable villa in the midst of a park, on the bank of the Seine. Their coachman was this François, a country boy, a little awkward, with a good heart, but simple and easily duped.
When he was returning one evening to his master’s house, a dog began to follow him. At first he took no notice of it, but the persistence of the beast walking at his heels caused him finally to turn around. He looked to see if he knew this dog. No, he had never seen it before.
The dog was frightfully thin and had great hanging dugs. She trotted behind the man with a woeful, famished look, her tail between her legs, her ears close to her head, and stopped when he stopped, starting again when he started.
He tried to drive away this skeleton of a beast: “Get out! Go away! Go, now! Hou! Hou!” She would run away a few steps and then sit down waiting; then, when the coachman started on again, she followed behind him.
He pretended to pick up stones. The animal fled a little way with a great shaking of the flabby dugs, but followed again as soon as the man turned his back.
Then the coachman took pity and called her. The dog approached timidly, her back bent in a circle, and all the ribs showing under the skin. The man stroked these protruding bones and, moved by the misery of the beast, said: “Come along, then!” Immediately she wagged her tail; she felt that she was welcome, adopted; and instead of staying at her new master’s heels, she began to run ahead of him.
He installed her on some straw in his stable, then ran to the kitchen in search of bread. When she had eaten her fill, she went to sleep, curled up in a ring.
The next day the coachman told his master, who allowed him to keep the animal. She was a good beast, intelligent and faithful, affectionate and gentle.
But soon they discovered in her a terrible fault. She was inflamed with love from one end of the year to the other. In a short time she had made the acquaintance of every dog about the country, and they roamed about the place day and night. With the indifference of a harlot, she shared her favours with them, feigning to like each one best, dragging behind her a veritable pack composed of many different models of the barking race, some as large as a fist, others as tall as an ass. She took them on interminable walks along the roads, and when she stopped to rest in the shade, they made a circle about her and looked at her with tongues hanging out.
The people of the country considered her a phenomenon; they had never seen anything like it. The veterinary could not understand it.
When she returned to the stable in the evening, the crowd of dogs besieged the house. They wormed their way through every crevice in the hedge which enclosed the park, devastated the flower beds, broke down the flowers, dug holes in the clumps of plants, exasperating the gardener. They would howl the whole night about the building where their friend lodged, and nothing could persuade them to go away.
In the daytime, they even entered the house. It was an invasion, a plague, a calamity. At every moment the people of the house met on the staircase, and even in the rooms, little yellow pug dogs with bushy tails, hunting dogs, bulldogs, wandering Pomeranians with dirty skins, homeless vagabonds, and enormous Newfoundland dogs, which frightened the children.
All the unknown dogs for ten miles around came, from one knew not where, and lived, no one knew how, and then disappeared.
Nevertheless, François adored Cocotte. He had called her Cocotte, without malice, although she well deserved the name. And he repeated over and over again: “That dog is human. It only lacks speech.”
He had a magnificent collar in red leather made for her, which bore these words, engraved on a copper plate: “Mademoiselle Cocotte, the property of François, the coachman.”
She became enormous. She was now as fat as she had once been thin, her body puffed out, under it still hung the long, swaying dugs. She had fattened suddenly and walked with difficulty, her paws wide apart, after the fashion of people that are too stout, her mouth open for breath, and she became exhausted as soon as she tried to run.
She
