In another early recollection, I remember taking the food Mr. 03-01 had prepared for my dog down to the woodshed, that I might delight the creature and enjoy his company for some minutes before my lessons. The dog was a stray, though sweet enough in disposition once fed, and for two weeks it had been my constant care and practice to nurse him as a special pet. I was perhaps five or six years of age; the dog was named Cloud. I entered the woodshed to find him unmoving.

I rearranged his legs, but still he would not stir.

I recall no emotion on this occasion; nor do I recall emotion from many of the circumstances that formed the early passages of my life, for which nullity I have no explanation; for I know that such instances as this melted my heart and battered my sensibilities; but I have no memory of those inward commotions. I was trained in observation, not in reaction.

It is indicative of the rigors of scrutiny to which I have always subjected myself that though I can recall none of the tremors of my breast, none of the calamity of spirit this must have occasioned, I do recall the floods of tears I shed as I ran through the house — the scolding I received from a footman — and at last the complaint I made to Mr. 03-01.

Mr. 03-01 swore and followed me to the woodshed to examine the body; there, I stood by the body of the dog as he examined it, and I gave myself over to silent weeping.

It was not for many years that I read an article he penned on that occasion, and found that Cloud had been memorialized; and, furthermore, grew to understand through this brief chemical treatise, frank in its disclosure of experimental methodology, that I had murdered my dog by my own hand; for that excellent and affectionate creature had been poisoned by the same food I gave him daily, Mr. 03-01 admixing an experimental mercurious compound into the meat and rice to determine whether it was fatal to mammals.

This I did not know when I was five; I merely knew a hollowness, as best I can recall it, so windy and sharp I could not stop weeping. Mr. 03-01, noting my sorrow, took me into the experimental chamber and sat me upon his knee. “Octavian,” he said, “why do you feel sorrow?”

I could not formulate an answer.

“Do you think that Cloud hath passed to another world?” he asked.

I nodded, and he asked me what that place might resemble; and in my answer I described a paradise of dogs; upon which he inquired whether dogs have a soul, and this, too, I answered.

So I sat on his lap and told him what he wished to know; and carefully, nodding, he transcribed my answers for study, comment, and future publication.