One evening, as he was returning home, a dog began to follow him.  At first he paid no attention to it, but the creature’s obstinacy at last made him turn round.  He looked to see if he knew this dog.  No, he had never seen it.  It was a female dog and frightfully thin.  She was trotting behind him with a mournful and famished look, her tail between her legs, her ears flattened against her head and stopping and starting whenever he did.

He tried to chase this skeleton away and cried: 

“Run along!  Get out!  Kss! kss!” She retreated a few steps, then sat down and waited.  And when the coachman started to walk again she followed along behind him.

He pretended to pick up some stones.  The animal ran a little farther away, but came back again as soon as the man’s back was turned.

Then the coachman Francois took pity on the beast and called her.  The dog approached timidly.  The man patted her protruding ribs, moved by the beast’s misery, and he cried:  “Come! come here!” Immediately she began to wag her tail, and, feeling herself taken in, adopted, she began to run along ahead of her new master.

He made her a bed on the straw in the stable, then he ran to the kitchen for some bread.  When she had eaten all she could she curled up and went to sleep.

When his employers heard of this the next day they allowed the coachman to keep the animal.  It was a good beast, caressing and faithful, intelligent and gentle.

Nevertheless Francois adored Cocotte, and he kept repeating:  “That beast is human.  She only lacks speech.”

He had a magnificent red leather collar made for her which bore these words engraved on a copper plate:  “Mademoiselle Cocotte, belonging to the coachman Francois.”

She was remarkably prolific and four times a year would give birth to a batch of little animals belonging to every variety of the canine race.  Francois would pick out one which he would leave her and then he would unmercifully throw the others into the river.  But soon the cook joined her complaints to those of the gardener.  She would find dogs under the stove, in the ice box, in the coal bin, and they would steal everything they came across.

Finally the master, tired of complaints, impatiently ordered Francois to get rid of Cocotte.  In despair the man tried to give her away.  Nobody wanted her.  Then he decided to lose her, and he gave her to a teamster, who was to drop her on the other side of Paris, near Joinville-le-Pont.

Cocotte returned the same day.  Some decision had to be taken.  Five francs was given to a train conductor to take her to Havre.  He was to drop her there.

Three days later she returned to the stable, thin, footsore and tired out.

The master took pity on her and let her stay.  But other dogs were attracted as before, and one evening, when a big dinner party was on, a stuffed turkey was carried away by one of them right under the cook’s nose, and she did not dare to stop him.