ABSTRACT
Writing to Forster from Paris at the beginning of January 1856, Dickens included in his letter an extended, admiring description of the Zouave infantry – ‘A remarkable body of men … wild, dangerous, and picturesque’ – who had marched along the Avenue des Champs Elysées under his window ‘for half-an-hour or so’ (P VIII, p. 1). The description – flagged by Forster with a marginal note 1 – concludes:
They have a black dog belonging to the regiment, and, when they now marched along with their medals, this dog marched after the one non-commissioned officer he invariably follows with a profound conviction that he was decorated. I couldn’t see whether he had a medal, his hair being long; but he was perfectly up to what had befallen his regiment; and never saw anything so capital as his way of regarding the public. Whatever the regiment does, he is always in his place; and it was impossible to mistake the air of modest triumph which was now upon him. A small dog corporeally, but of a great mind. (P VIII, pp. 1–2)
