EXCELSIOR

All the newspapers of the week reproduced the information announcing the death
of the little dog of the great pianist Paderewski. He interrupted a tour in America to hastily return to his magnificent property in Switzerland, in order to bury the little creature that he adored, it is true to say. Among those who read this little news item, there are few who smiled at the tenderness of the former President of the Polish Republic for this animal. There are many people who, with Toussenel, the author of The Spirit of Beasts, think that “the best thing in man is the dog”.

How many Parisians are of this opinion! Jules Lemaître gave the reasons. “There is,” he wrote, “in dogs an ingenuity, a cordiality, an ardor of tenderness, a way of standing over you by giving you their whole heart to which it is impossible not to surrender. We love dogs almost like men. »

Some like them more. The Parisians who share Paderewski's sentiments are very numerous; we all knew the Marquis de Cherville, who wrote the column on Country Life for Le Temps, and who had a beautiful fox for whom he composed this epitaph: Here goes: the only friend who did not never bitten.

Léon Cladel, the famous stylist to whom we owe this masterpiece, "le Bouscassié", recounted part of his life in a volume that has become rare: "Kyrielle de chien," which is the story of the companions of four paws with which he loved to surround himself.

To legitimize, if possible, this attachment which somewhat resembled that of Paderewski, Léon Cladel recalled that the revolutionary tribunal had condemned and executed at the same time an invalid, from Saint-Prix, and his dog in 1793. Those who This interesting story will find details in a very curious work by M. de Saint-Prix, advisor to the court of Paris. (Memoirs on prisons, II, p. 485, 1823.)

Without going back a hundred years to prove the intelligence of these excellent animals, Ms. Carita Borderieux, the director of the Scientific Review of Psychism, will show you when you want her dog Zou, who knows how to read and calculate and even speaks a little.

Don't smile; there were about twenty of us who, a few days ago, saw and heard it, and it is up to you to convince yourself visually and audibly. It is a cross between a fox and a Beauceron shepherd; therefore, no race, no pedigree, but a rare intelligence, Madame Borderieux willingly shows it, and, on the days when he receives, he lavishes himself in caresses, his tail in plume and devoting himself with the greatest seriousness to his astonishing exercises.

JEAN-BERNARD.