Poor innocent beast!  Well indeed for him that he had not chanced to stop at the door of my neighbor and camarade, Paul Bouchard, who had a passion for practical physiology, and with whom no amount of animal suffering was of the smallest importance when weighed against the remote chance of an insignificant discovery, which would be challenged and contradicted as soon as announced by scores of his fellow-experimentalists.  If torture were indeed the true method of science, then would the vaunted tree of knowledge be no other than the upas tree of oriental legend, beneath whose fatal shadow lie hecatombs of miserable victims slain by its poisonous exhalations, the odour of which is fraught with agony and death!

My poodle remained with me many days.  No one appeared to claim him, and no inquiries elicited the least information regarding him.  A douceur of five francs had soothed the natural indignation and resentment displayed by my concierge at the first sight of my canine protege; the restlessness and suspicion he had evinced on making my acquaintance had subsided; and we were getting on in a very comfortable and friendly manner together, when accident threw in my way the clue I had laboriously but vainly sought.  Returning one day from a lecture, and being unusually pressed for time, I took a shorter cut homeward than was my wont, and at the corner of a narrow and ill-smelling street I came upon a little heterogeneous shop, in the windows of which were set out a variety of faded and bizarre articles of millinery.  Hanging from a front shelf in a conspicuous position among the collection was a strip of the identical silver ribbon which had encircled Pepin’s throat—­I called the dog Pepin—­on the night I rescued him from the streets.  Without hesitation I entered the shop and questioned a slatternly woman who sat behind the counter munching gruyere cheese and garlic.

“Will you tell me, madame,” said I with my most agreeable air, “whether you recollect having sold any of that tinsel ribbon lately, and to whom?”

She was not likely to have much custom, I thought, and her clients would be easily remembered.

“What’s that to you?” was her retort, as she paused in her meal and stared at me; “do you want to buy the rest of it?”

I took the hint immediately, and produced my purse.  “With all the pleasure in life,” I said, “if you will do me the favour I ask.”

She darted a keen look at me, laughed, pushed her cheese aside, and took the ribbon from its place in the shop window.

“I sold half a metre of it about three weeks ago,” said she slowly, “to Noemi Bergeron; you know her, perhaps?  She’s not been this way lately.  There’s a metre of it left; it’s one franc twenty, monsieur.”

“And where does Noemi Bergeron live?” I asked, as she dropped the money into her till.

“Well, she used to lodge at number ten in this street, with Maman Paquet.  Maybe she’s gone.  I’ve not seen either her or her dog this fortnight.”