“Down, Lieverle.  I know you love me.  If you did not, who would?”

Never had I seen so tremendous a dog as this Lieverle.  His height attained two feet and a half.  He would have been a most formidable creature in an attack.  His forehead was broad, flat, and covered with fine soft hair; his eye was keen, his paws of great length, his sides and legs a woven mass of muscles and nerves, broad over the back and shoulders, slender and tapering towards the hind legs.  But he had no scent.  If such monstrous and powerful hounds were endowed with the scent of the terrier there would soon be an end of game.

Sperver had returned to his seat, and was passing his hand over Lieverle’s massive head with pride, and enumerating to me his excellent qualities.

Lieverle seemed to understand him.

“See, Fritz, that dog will throttle a wolf with one snap of his jaws.  For courage and strength, he is perfection.  He is not five years old, but he is in his prime.  I need not tell you that he is trained to hunt the boar.  Every time we come across a herd of them I tremble for Lieverle; his attack is too straightforward, he flies on the game as straight as an arrow.  That is why I am afraid of the brutes’ tusks.  Lie down, Lieverle, lie on your back!”

The dog obeyed, and presented to view his flesh-coloured sides.

“Look, Fritz, at that long white seam without any hair upon it from under the thigh right up to the chest.  A boar did that.  Poor creature! he was holding him fast by the ear and would not let go; we tracked the two by the blood.  I was the first up with them.  Seeing my Lieverle I gave a shout, I jumped off my horse, I caught him between my arms, flung him into my cloak, and brought him home.  I was almost beside myself.  Happily the vital parts had not been wounded.  I sewed up his belly in spite of his howling and yelling, for he suffered fearfully; but in three days he was already licking his wound, and a dog who licks himself is already saved.  You remember that, Lieverle, hey! and aren’t we fonder of each other now than ever?”

I was quite moved with the affection of the man for that dog, and of the dog for his master; they seemed to look into the very depths of each other’s souls.  The dog wagged his tail, and the man had tears in his eyes.

Sperver went on—­

“What amazing strength!  Do you see, Fritz, he has burst his cord to get to me—­a rope of six strands; he found out my track and here he is!  Here, Lieverle, catch!”

And he threw to him the remains of the leg of kid.  The jaws opened wide and closed again with a terrible crash, and Sperver, looking at me significantly, said—­

“Fritz, if he were to grip you by your breeches you would not get away so easily!”

“Nor any one else, I suppose.”

The dog went to stretch himself at his ease full length under the mantelshelf with the leg fast between his mighty paws.  He began to tear it into pieces.  Sperver looked at him out of the corner of his eye with great satisfaction.  The bone was fast falling into small fragments in the powerful mill that was crashing it.  Lieverle was partial to marrow!