They are the least
bigoted Orientals one could wish to meet. Only fifteen in a hundred,
perhaps even less, perform the devotions prescribed by the Prophet. And it
is part of their charming heterodoxy to be dog-eaters. They will catch and
devour each other's dogs; they even breed them for the market, though they
dare not expose the meat publicly, any more than that of swine, which they
eat with relish. But up to a few days ago they had never ventured to touch
the dog of a foreigner. On Wednesday evening, however, a fox-terrier
belonging to a French official was found in the street, dead, with its
throat cut. A stream of blood was traced from that spot to the door of a
native eating-shop, and enquiries from the neighbours elicited the fact
that the cook of the establishment had caught the beast and cut its
throat; that the miserable creature, in its dying struggles, had escaped
from his grasp and run in the direction of home, only to stagger by the
roadside and expire from loss of blood.
There was a wild excitement over this little episode. The dog of a
Frenchman killed, for culinary purposes, by an Arab; it was the _comble_
of temerity! The owner of the animal, on hearing the news, buckled on his
revolver and repaired to the shop with the avowed intention of shooting
his man, whom the police, fortunately, had already conjured into some safe
place of custody.
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