Mademoiselle Cocotte
We were about to leave the asylum when I noticed in a corner of the courtyard a tall, thin man, obstinately going through the motions of calling an imaginary dog. He would call out, in sweet, tender tones: “Cocotte, my little Cocotte, come here, Cocotte, come here, my beauty,” striking his leg, as one does to attract the attention of an animal. I said to the doctor:
“What is the matter with him?”
He replied:
“Oh, that is not an interesting case. He is a coachman called François, who went mad after drowning his dog.”
I insisted:
“Do tell me his story. The most simple and humble things sometimes strike most to our hearts.”
And here is the adventure of this man, which became known through a groom, his comrade.
In the suburbs of Paris lived a rich, middle-class family. They lived in a fashionable villa in the midst of a park, on the bank of the Seine. Their coachman was this François, a country boy, a little awkward, with a good heart, but simple and easily duped.
When he was returning one evening to his master’s house, a dog began to follow him. At first he took no notice of it, but the persistence of the beast walking at his heels caused him finally to turn around. He looked to see if he knew this dog. No, he had never seen it before.
The dog was frightfully thin and had great hanging dugs. She trotted behind the man with a woeful, famished look, her tail between her legs, her ears close to her head, and stopped when he stopped, starting again when he started.
He tried to drive away this skeleton of a beast: “Get out! Go away! Go, now! Hou! Hou!” She would run away a few steps and then sit down waiting; then, when the coachman started on again, she followed behind him.
He pretended to pick up stones. The animal fled a little way with a great shaking of the flabby dugs, but followed again as soon as the man turned his back.
Then the coachman took pity and called her. The dog approached timidly, her back bent in a circle, and all the ribs showing under the skin. The man stroked these protruding bones and, moved by the misery of the beast, said: “Come along, then!” Immediately she wagged her tail; she felt that she was welcome, adopted; and instead of staying at her new master’s heels, she began to run ahead of him.
He installed her on some straw in his stable, then ran to the kitchen in search of bread. When she had eaten her fill, she went to sleep, curled up in a ring.
The next day the coachman told his master, who allowed him to keep the animal. She was a good beast, intelligent and faithful, affectionate and gentle.
But soon they discovered in her a terrible fault. She was inflamed with love from one end of the year to the other. In a short time she had made the acquaintance of every dog about the country, and they roamed about the place day and night. With the indifference of a harlot, she shared her favours with them, feigning to like each one best, dragging behind her a veritable pack composed of many different models of the barking race, some as large as a fist, others as tall as an ass. She took them on interminable walks along the roads, and when she stopped to rest in the shade, they made a circle about her and looked at her with tongues hanging out.
The people of the country considered her a phenomenon; they had never seen anything like it. The veterinary could not understand it.
When she returned to the stable in the evening, the crowd of dogs besieged the house. They wormed their way through every crevice in the hedge which enclosed the park, devastated the flower beds, broke down the flowers, dug holes in the clumps of plants, exasperating the gardener. They would howl the whole night about the building where their friend lodged, and nothing could persuade them to go away.
In the daytime, they even entered the house. It was an invasion, a plague, a calamity. At every moment the people of the house met on the staircase, and even in the rooms, little yellow pug dogs with bushy tails, hunting dogs, bulldogs, wandering Pomeranians with dirty skins, homeless vagabonds, and enormous Newfoundland dogs, which frightened the children.
All the unknown dogs for ten miles around came, from one knew not where, and lived, no one knew how, and then disappeared.
Nevertheless, François adored Cocotte. He had called her Cocotte, without malice, although she well deserved the name. And he repeated over and over again: “That dog is human. It only lacks speech.”
He had a magnificent collar in red leather made for her, which bore these words, engraved on a copper plate: “Mademoiselle Cocotte, the property of François, the coachman.”
She became enormous. She was now as fat as she had once been thin, her body puffed out, under it still hung the long, swaying dugs. She had fattened suddenly and walked with difficulty, her paws wide apart, after the fashion of people that are too stout, her mouth open for breath, and she became exhausted as soon as she tried to run.
She showed a phenomenal fecundity, producing, four times a year, a litter of little animals, belonging to all varieties of the canine race. François, after having chosen the one he would leave her “to take the milk,” would pick up the others in his stable apron and pitilessly throw them into the river.
Soon the cook joined her complaints to those of the gardener. She found dogs under her kitchen range, in the cupboards, and in the coal bin, and they stole everything they could see.
The master lost his patience and ordered François to get rid of Cocotte. The man was inconsolable, and tried to place her somewhere. No one wanted her. Then he resolved to lose her, and put her in charge of a car driver who was to leave her in the country the other side of Paris, near Joinville-le-Pont.
That same evening Cocotte was back.
It became necessary to take stern measures. For the sum of five francs, they persuaded the guard on a train to Havre to take her. He was to let her loose when they arrived.
At the end of three days, she appeared again in her stable, harassed, emaciated, torn and exhausted.
The master took pity on her, and did not insist.
But the dogs soon returned in greater numbers than ever, and were more provoking. And as a great dinner was being given one evening, a truffled fowl was carried off by a dog, under the nose of the cook, who did not dare to take it away.
This time the master was angry, and calling François, said to him hotly: “If you don’t drown this beast before tomorrow morning, I shall fire you out, do you understand?”
The man was thunderstruck, but he went up to his room to pack his trunk, preferring to leave his job. Then he thought that he would not be likely to get in anywhere else, dragging this unwelcome beast behind him; he remembered that he was in a good house, well paid and well fed; and he said to himself that it was not worth while giving up all this for a dog. He thought of his own interests and ended by resolving to get rid of Cocotte at dawn the next day.
However, he slept badly. At daybreak he was up; and, taking a strong rope, he went in search of the dog. She arose slowly, shook herself, stretched her limbs, and came to greet her master. Then his courage failed and he began to stroke her tenderly, smoothing her long ears, kissing her on the muzzle, lavishing upon her all the loving names that he could think of.
A neighbouring clock struck six; he could delay no longer. He opened the door; “Come,” said he. The beast wagged her tail, understanding only that she was going out.
They reached the bank and he chose a place where the water seemed deepest. Then he tied one end of the cord to the beautiful leather collar, and taking a great stone, attached it to the other end. Then he seized Cocotte in his arms and kissed her furiously, as one does when taking leave of a person. Then he held her tight around the neck, fondling her and calling her “My pretty Cocotte, my little Cocotte,” and she responded as best she could, growling with pleasure.
Ten times he tried to throw her in, and each time his courage failed him.
Then, abruptly, he decided to do it, and, with all his force, hurled her as far as possible. She tried at first to swim, as she did when taking a bath, but her head, dragged by the stone, went under again and again. She threw her master a look of despair, a human look, battling, as a person does when drowning. Then, the whole front part of the body sank while the hind paws kicked madly out of the water; then they disappeared also.
For five minutes bubbles of air came to the surface, as if the river had begun to boil. And François, haggard, and at his wits’ end, with palpitating heart, believed he saw Cocotte writhing in the slime. And he said to himself, with the simplicity of a peasant: “What does she think of me now, the poor beast?”
He almost became mad. He was sick for a month, and each night saw the dog again. He felt her licking his hands; he heard her bark.
They had to call a physician. Finally he grew better; and his master and mistress took him to their estate at Biessard, near Rouen.
There he was still on the bank of the Seine. He began to go bathing. Every morning he went down with the groom to swim across the river.
One day, as they were amusing themselves splashing in the water, François suddenly cried out to his companion:
“Look at what is coming towards us. I am going to make you taste a cutlet.”
It was an enormous carcass, swelled and stripped of its hair, its paws moving forward in the air, following the current.
François approached it, and continued to joke:
“By God, it is rather high! What a catch, my boy, there is plenty of meat on it!”
And he turned around it, keeping at a distance from the great, putrefying body.
Then, suddenly, he was silent, and looked at it in strange fashion. He approached it again, this time as if he were going to touch it. He carefully examined the collar, then put out his hand and grasped the neck, twirled it around, drew it towards him, and read upon the green copper that still adhered to the discoloured leather: “Mademoiselle Cocotte, the property of François, the coachman.” The dead dog had found her master, sixty miles from their home!
He uttered a fearful cry, and began to swim with all his might towards the bank, shouting all the way. And when he reached the land, he ran off wildly, stark naked, through the country. He was mad!