Canine Guests. ^3 



keen enough to discover. I had invited several inteUigent 

 friends, and told them previously that my object was to 

 discover the secret of the confederacy between M. du 

 Rouil and his dogs, begging their best assistance. They 

 watched him as closely as I did, but could detect nothing. 

 Remembering an odd notion of Sydney Smith's, that 

 people might be taught to read by odours, the idea occurred 

 to me that M. du Rouil might contrive to touch the cards 

 that the dogs selected, and curiously enough they certainly 

 smelt them rather than looked at them. But how could 

 such a supposition be reconcilable with the fact that M. du 

 Rouil kept at a distance from the table, and could not pos- 

 sibly foresee the words that we asked for .' I only men- 

 tion this hypothesis of reading by odour to show to what 

 straits we were reduced in our guessing. 



As the dogs and their owner were to stay all night at my 

 house, I determined to have a quiet talk with him when 

 everybody else was gone, and get at the secret if I could. 

 So when we were quite alone together I plied him with 

 indiscreet questions, and he was frank enough up to a cer- 

 tain point, but beyond that point absolutely impenetrable. 



He confessed at once that there was a secret, but he said, 

 "La ficelle est bien cachh" as indeed it was. Accord- 

 ing to his account, which was probably quite true as 

 far as it went, the dogs were like actors, who had not 

 quite thoroughly mastered their parts, and he himself was 

 like the prompter near the foothghts. To begin with, 

 Blanche really knew the letters of the alphabet and the 

 playing-cards by their names, and Lyda really knew all 

 the figures. In addition to this, he said that Blanche had 

 studied about a hundred and fifty' words in different lan- 

 guages, something like twenty in each language, words 



La ficelle . . cac/iee. The secret is well kept. 

 D 



