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Zamore, who was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael’s painting, he exclaimed in his canine speech, Anch’ io son pittore! and when the company filed past him, he also, filled with a noble spirit of emulation, rose up, somewhat uncertainly, upon his hind legs and attempted to join them, to the great delight of the onlookers.

The manager did not see it in that light, and let fly a smart cut of his whip at Zamore, who was driven from the circle, just as a spectator would be ejected from the theatre did he, during the performance, take on himself to ascend to the stage and to take part in the ballet.

This public humiliation did not check Zamore’s vocation. He returned home with drooping tail and thoughtful mien, and during the whole of the remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that morning. The gentleman was practising!

Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run out on the square, slip between the spectators’ legs and watch, with the closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful, however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them, remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever. Ere long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.

When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters of invitation to his debut in the choregraphic art, met around a square of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by ouahs! ouahs! closely resembling the bravi of dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a deux temps waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded by human hands.