This happened two or three times, then Bashan finally gave up accompanying me when I turned towards the left. He knows instantly what I intend to do as soon as I emerge from the doorway of the house—make a trip to the hunting-grounds or a trip to the great world. He jumps up from the doormat upon which he has been awaiting my coming forth under the protecting arch of the entrance. He jumps up and at the same moment he sees what my intentions are. My clothing betrays these to him, the cane that I carry, also my attitude and expression, the cool and preoccupied look I give him, or the irritation and challenge in my eyes. He understands. Headlong he plunges down the steps and goes dancing before me in swift and sudden bounds and full of excitement towards the gate when my going forth seems to be certain. But when he beholds hope vanish, he subsides within himself, lays his ears close to his head and his eyes take on that expression of shy misery which is found in contrite sinners—that look which misfortune begets in the eyes of men and also of animals.
At times he is really unable to believe what he sees and knows, that it is all up and that there is no use hoping for a hunt. His desires have been too intense. He repudiates the signs and symbols—chooses not to see the city walking-stick, the careful citified clothes I am wearing. He pushes through the gate with me, switches around outside in a half turn, and seeks to draw me towards the right by starting to gallop in this direction and by turning his head towards me, forces himself to overlook the fateful “No” which I oppose to his efforts. He comes back when I actually do turn towards the left, accompanies me, snorting deeply, and ejaculating short, confused high notes which seem to arise from the tremendous tension in his interior, as I walk along the fence of the garden, and then he begins to jump back and forth over the pickets of the adjacent public park. These pickets are rather high, and he groans a little in his flight through the air out of fear lest he hurt himself. He makes these leaps impelled by a kind of desperate gaiety, scornful of all hard facts, and also to bribe me, to work upon my sympathies by his cleverness. For it is not yet quite impossible—however improbable it may seem—that I may nevertheless leave the city path at the end of the park, once more turn towards the left and lead him on to liberty—even if only by way of the slightly roundabout way to the postbox. This happens, it is true, but it happens only rarely. Once this hope has dissolved into empty air, Bashan settles down upon his haunches and lets me go my way.
There he sits now, in yokel-like, ungraceful attitude, in the very middle of the road, and stares after my retreating form, down the whole long vista. If I turn my head, he pricks up his ears, but does not follow me. Nor would he follow me if I should call or whistle—he knows this would all be to no purpose. Even from the very end of the avenue I can see him still sitting there, a small, dark, awkward shape in the middle of the high road. A pang goes through my heart—I mount the tram with an uneasy conscience. He has waited so long and so patiently—and who does not know what torture waiting can be! His whole life is nothing but waiting—for the next walk in the open—and this waiting begins as soon as he has rested after his last run. During the night, too, he waits, for his slumbers are distributed throughout the entire twenty-four hours of the sun’s revolution, and many a siesta upon the smooth lawn, whilst the sun beats upon his coat, or behind the curtains of his hut, must help to shorten the bare and empty spaces of the day. His nocturnal rest is therefore dismembered and without unity. He is driven by blind impulses hither and thither in the darkness, through the yard and the garden—he runs from place to place—and waits. He waits for the recurrent visit of the local watchman with the lantern, the heavy thud of whose footfall he accompanies against his own better knowledge with a terrible burst of heralding barks. He waits for the paling of the heavens, the crowing of the cock in the nearby nursery-garden, the stir of the morning wind in the trees, and for the unlocking of the kitchen entrance, so that he may slip in and warm himself at the white-tiled range.
But I believe that the torture of this nightly vigil is mild, compared to that which Bashan must endure in the broad of day, particularly when the weather is fair, be it winter or summer, when the sun lures into the open, and the desire for violent motion tugs in every muscle, and his master, without whom, of course, there can be no real enjoyment, persistently refuses to leave his seat behind the glass door.
Bashan’s mobile little body, through which life pulsates so swiftly and feverishly, has been, so to speak, exhausted with rest—and there can be no thought of sleep. Up he comes to the terrace in front
