He is your true nobility of nature below the
human. But there _are_ 'curs of low degree;' dogs of neither genial
instinct nor breeding; senseless animals, that belie the noble nature
of their species, are living libels upon their kind. There was one of
these over against my rooms, at the time of the sickness I speak of. I
say _was_ for thanks to the fates, he is among the things that have
been; he belongs to history, has been wiped out.
"He was a barking dog. When the moon was in the sky, he barked at the
moon. When only the stars shone out, he barked at the stars; when
clouds shut in both moon and stars, he barked at the clouds; and when
the darkness was so deep and black as to obscure even the clouds, he
barked at the darkness. Through all the long night he barked, barked,
barked! It was not a bark of defiance, nor of alarm, nor of
astonishment, nor of warning. It was not a note of danger, breaking
the hush of midnight, saying that thieves were abroad, that murder was
on its stealthy mission, or that the wolf was on the walk. It was a
senseless, monotonous, idiotic bow, wow! Nothing more, nothing less.
"All Monday night, as I lay tossing upon a bed of pain, when fever was
coursing through my veins, and every pulse went plunging like a steam
engine from the gorged heart to every extremity, and my brain was like
molten lead, I heard that terrible bark! It was my evil genius, my
destiny.
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