Louison and Frédéric sing; their mouths are as round as a flower and the song rises shrill² and thin and clear in the morning air.

But listen! suddenly the notes stick in Frederic’s throat.

What unseen power is it has strangled the music on the boy’s lips? It is fear. Every day, as sure as fate, he comes upon the butcher’s dog at the end of the village street, and every day his heart seems to stop and his legs begin to shake at the sight. Yet the butcher’s dog does not fly at him, or even threaten to. He sits peaceably at his master’s shop-door. But he is black, and he has a staring bloodshot eye and shows a row of sharp white teeth. He looks frightful³. And then he squats⁴ there in the middle of bits of meat and offal and all sorts of horrors—which makes him more terrifying still. Of course it is n’t his fault, but he is the presiding genius. Yes, a savage⁵ brute⁶, the butcher’s dog! So, the instant Frédéric catches sight of the beast before the shop, he picks up a big stone, as he sees grown-up men do to keep off bad-tempered⁷ curs, and he slinks past close, close under the opposite wall.

That is how he behaved this time; and Louison laughed at him.

She did not make any of those daredevil speeches one generally caps with others more reckless still. No, she never said a word; she never stopped singing. But she altered her voice and began singing on such a mocking note that Frédéric reddened to his very ears. Then his little head began to buzz with many thoughts. He learned that we must

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