A Dog of Flanders

Chapter 14 “He is gone to the things that he loved,” thought Patrasche. He could not understand, but he was full of sorrow and of pity for the art-passion that to him was so incomprehensible and yet so sacred.The portals of the cathedral were unclosed after the midnight mass. Some heedlessness in the custodians, too […]

Chapter 13 Her father bent his head gravely, “Ay, ay: let the dog have the best;” for the stern old man was moved and shaken to his heart’s depths.It was Christmas Eve, and the mill-house was filled with oak logs and squares of turf, with cream and honey, with meat and bread, and the rafters

Chapter 12 All night long the boy and the dog sat by the fireless hearth in the darkness, drawn close together for warmth and sorrow. Their bodies were insensible to the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them.When the morning broke over the white, chill earth it was the morning of Christmas Eve. With

Chapter 11 Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had dwelt in one little world all his short life, and in his childhood had been caressed and applauded on all sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that little world turn against him for naught. Especially hard in that

Chapter 10 “Rest thee at home, Patrasche—it is time thou didst rest—and I can quite well push in the cart by myself,” urged Nello many a morning; but Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was sounding; and every

Chapter 9 Now he had a secret which only Patrasche knew. There was a little out-house to the hut, which no one entered but himself—a dreary place, but with abundant clear light from the north. Here he had fashioned himself rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here on a great gray sea of stretched

Chapter 8 But he did not complain; it was his habit to be quiet; old Jehan Daas had said ever to him, “We are poor; we must take what God sends—the ill with the good; the poor cannot choose.”To which the boy had always listened in silence, being reverent of his old grandfather; but nevertheless

Chapter 7 One day her father, Baas Cogez, a good man, but somewhat stern, came on a pretty group in the long meadow behind the mill, where the aftermath had that day been cut. It was his little daughter sitting amidst the hay, with the great tawny head of Patrasche on her lap, and many

Chapter 6 The whole soul of the little Ardennois thrilled and stirred with an absorbing passion for Art. Going on his ways through the old city in the early days before the sun or the people had risen, Nello, who looked only a little peasant-boy, with a great dog drawing milk to sell from door

Chapter 5 There was only one thing which caused Patrasche any uneasiness in his life, and it was this. Antwerp, as all the world knows, is full at every turn of old piles of stones, dark and ancient and majestic, standing in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and taverns, rising by the water’s edge, with

Chapter 4 A few years later, old Jehan Daas, who had always been a cripple, became so paralyzed with rheumatism that it was impossible for him to go out with the cart any more. Then little Nello, being now grown to his sixth year of age, and knowing the town well from having accompanied his

Chapter 3 After a time, among the holiday-makers, there came a little old man who was bent and lame, and very feeble. He was in no guise for feasting; he was very poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged his silent way slowly through the dust among the pleasure-seekers. He looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered,

Chapter 2 A dog of Flanders—yellow of hide, large of head and limb, with wolf-like ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened in the muscular development wrought in his breed by many generations of hard service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire to son in

Chapter 1 Nello was an orphaned boy. His parents had died when he was very small. He had nobody to look after him. One day he was wandering in the streets near his settlement. All of a sudden, he chanced to see a dog which seemed to be all alone like him. He went near