Percy was of a different metal. Percy would grit his teeth and keep mum. He feared the rawhide whip just as Bashan fears it, and unfortunately he got a taste of it oftener than Bashan; for, first of all, I was younger and more hot-tempered during his epoch than I am at present, and secondly, his heedlessness often assumed a wanton and sinister aspect which simply clamoured for chastisement and urged me to it. When, driven to extremities, I would take down the whip from the nail, then, it is true, he would crawl under the table or bench and make himself small, but never a howl passed his lips when the blow, and perhaps yet another, came humming down upon his back; at most he gave a low moan, in case the whip bit too hard. But Bully Bashan begins to shriek and whimper when I merely raise my arm. In short, he is without pride or dignity, without self-restraint or self-discipline. But his activities seldom call for armed punitive intervention—the less so since I have long ago ceased to demand achievements from him which are contrary to his nature and insistence upon which might lead to a collision.
Tricks, for instance, I never expect from him—it would be futile. He is no savant, no marketplace miracle-monger, no poodle-like valet—no professor—but a hunter-lad, full of go and vitality. I have already emphasised the fact that he is a splendid vaulter. If it be necessary, he will balk at no obstacle—if it be too high, he will simply take a running jump and climb over it, letting himself drop down on the other side—but take it he will. But the obstacle must be a real obstacle, that is, not one under which one may run or crawl; for then Bashan would consider it sheer insanity to jump over it. Such obstacles present themselves in the shape of a wall, a ditch, a barred gate, a fence without a hole. A horizontal bar, a stick held out, is no obstacle, and so, of course, one cannot well jump over it without bringing oneself into a silly contrariness to things as well as to one’s reason. Bashan refuses to do this. He refuses. Should you attempt to persuade him to jump over some sham obstacle, you would finally in your wrath be forced to take him by the scruff of the neck and to hurl him over it, barking and yapping. He will hereupon assume a mien as though he had magnanimously permitted you to attain your wishes and will celebrate the result by caperings and rapturous barks. You may flatter him, beat him, but here you will encounter a resistance of sheer reason against the trick pure and simple which you will never be able to overcome.
He is not unobliging, gratifying his master means a great deal to him—he will vault over a hedge at my wish or command, and not only from his own impulses, and gladly will he reap his meed of praise and thanks for this. But even though you should beat him half to death, he will not jump over a pole or a stick, but run under it. He will beg a hundred times for forgiveness, for consideration, for mercy, for he fears pain, fears it, to the point of utter pusillanimity. But no fear and no pain can force him to do something which from a physical point of view would be mere child’s play for him, but for which all mental capacities are obviously lacking in him. To demand this act of him is not to confront him with the question as to whether he should or should not jump—this question is already settled for him in advance, and the command simply means a clubbing. To demand the incomprehensible and therefore the impossible from him is, in his eyes, merely a pretext for a quarrel, for a disturbance of friendship and a chance to inflict a whipping, and is in itself the very inauguration of these things. This is Bashan’s conception of things, as far as I can see, and I doubt whether one can speak of mere ordinary stubbornness in this connection. Obduracy may finally be broken, yes, it even demands to be broken, but Bashan would seal his refusal to perform a trick or feat with his very life.
A wondrous soul! So friendly and intimate and yet so alien in certain traits, so alien that our language is incapable of doing justice to this canine logic. What relation has this, for instance, with that terrible circumstantiality, always so unnerving for the spectator, with which the meeting, the acquaintance or the mere recognition of dog and dog fulfil themselves? My picaroon forays with Bashan have made me the witness of hundreds of such meetings, or rather I should say forced me to be an unwilling, embarrassed witness. And every time, as long as the scene lasted, his usually transparent behaviour became inscrutable to me—I found it impossible to effect a sympathetic penetration into the feelings, laws, and tribal customs which form the basis of his behaviour. In reality the meeting in the open of two dogs strange to each other, belongs to the most poignant, arresting, and pathetic of conceivable
