The old dog Caesar - His powerful personality - Last days and end - The
old dog's burial - The fact of death is brought home to me - A child's
mental anguish - My mother comforts me - Limitations of the child's
mind - Fear of death - Witnessing the slaughter of cattle - A man in the
moat - Margarita, the nursery maid - Her beauty and lovableness - Her
death - I refuse to see her dead.
When recalling the impressions and experiences of that most eventful
sixth year, the one incident which looks biggest in memory, at all
events in the last half of that year, is the death of Caesar. There is
nothing in the past I can remember so well: it was indeed the most
important event of my childhood - the first thing in a young life which
brought the eternal note of sadness in.
It was in the early spring, about the middle of August, and I can even
remember that it was windy weather and bitterly cold for the time of
year, when the old dog was approaching his end.
Caesar was an old valued dog, although of no superior breed: he was
just an ordinary dog of the country, short-haired, with long legs and
a blunt muzzle. The ordinary dog or native cur was about the size of a
Scotch collie; Caesar was quite a third larger, and it was said of him
that he was as much above all other dogs of the house, numbering about
twelve or fourteen, in intelligence and courage as in size. Naturally,
he was the leader and master of the whole pack, and when he got up
with an awful growl, baring his big teeth, and hurled himself on the
others to chastise them for quarrelling or any other infringement of
dog law, they took it lying down. He was a black dog, now in his old
age sprinkled with white hairs all over his body, the face and legs
having gone quite grey. Caesar in a rage, or on guard at night, or
when driving cattle in from the plains, was a terrible being; with us
children he was mild-tempered and patient, allowing us to ride on his
back, just like old Pechicho the sheep-dog, described in the first
chapter. Now, in his decline, he grew irritable and surly, and ceased
to be our playmate. The last two or three months of his life were very
sad, and when it troubled us to see him so gaunt, with his big ribs
protruding from his sides, to watch his twitchings when he dozed,
groaning and wheezing the while, and marked, too, how painfully he
struggled to get up on his feet, we wanted to know why it was so - why
we could not give him something to make him well? For answer they
would open his great mouth to show us his teeth - the big blunt canines
and old molars worn down to stumps. Old age was what ailed him - he was
thirteen years old, and that did verily seem to me a great age, for I
was not half that, yet it seemed to me that I had been a very, very
long time in the world.
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