"Life is this way: first you have to beg for things and then you have to growl to keep them." Argos's master has been sent to the mountains for his health. Bored, he resolves to teach his hunting dog to talk. The experiment fails, but he himself--the more advanced animal--manages to learn Argos's language.

Translated from Italian (2012) by Juan LePuen
Length: 9,200 words
Genre: short story

Italian writer, born in Trieste, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1861, and most well known for the novel _La coscienza di Zeno_.