Little Poems in Prose

me with you, and from our two miseries we may perhaps make a kind of happiness.” “What becomes of dogs?” once said Nestor Roqueplan in an immortal pamphlet which he has doubtless forgotten and which I, and pos- sibly Sainte-Beuve still remember to-day. “Where do dogs go?” do you say, O men of little observation? They go about their busi- ness. A business appointment; a love appoint- ment. Across the fog, across the snow, across the mud, beneath the burning dog-star, be- neath the rustling rain, they go, they come, they trot, they pass under carriages; excited by fleas, passion, necessity or duty. Like our- selves they rise early, and seek their livelihood or pursue their pleasures. There are some that sleep in a ruin of the suburb, and who come every day at a fixed hour to ask for their portion at the door of a kitchen of the Palais-Royal; there are others who run in troops fifteen miles and more to partake of the repast which the charity of cer- tain sexagenarian old maids has got ready for them; women whose empty hearts are given to animals because senseless men will have no more to do with them. There are others who, like runaway negroes, maddened by love, leave, on certain days, their departments to