" This
pale dryness, how magnificent it was, and how filled it was with the
bitter fragrance of mint! It was not long before the horse stood in
front of Rabbit.

It was a sorry nag and dragged a two wheeled cart and was unable to
move except in a jerky sort of gallop. Every leap made its disjointed
skeleton quiver and jolted its harness and made its earth-colored
mane fly in the air, shiny and greenish, like the beard of an ancient
mariner. Wearily as though they were paving-stones the animal lifted
its hoofs which were swollen like tumors. Rabbit was frightened by
this great animated machine which moved with so loud a noise. He
bounded away and continued his flight over the meadows, with his
nose toward the Pyrenees, his tail toward the lowlands, his right eye
toward the rising sun, his left toward the village of Mesplede.

Finally he crouched down in the stubble, quite near a quail which
was sleeping in the manner of chickens half-buried in the dust, and
overcome by the heat was sweating off its fat through its feathers.

The morning was sparkling in the south. The blue sky grew pale under
the heat, and became pearl-gray. A hawk in seemingly effortless flight
was soaring, and describing larger and larger circles as it rose. At
a distance of several hundred yards lay the peacock-blue, shimmering
surface of a river, and lazily carried onward the mirrored reflection
of the alders; from their viscous leaves exuded a bitter perfume,
and their intense blackness cut sharply the pale luminousness of
the water. Near the dam fish glided past in swarms. An angelus beat
against the torrid whiteness of a church-steeple with its blue wing,
and Rabbit's noonday rest began.

* * * * *

He stayed in this stubble until evening, motionless, only troubled
somewhat by a cloud of mosquitoes quivering like a road in the sun.
Then at dusk he made two bounds forward softly and two more to the
left and to the right.

It was the beginning of the night. He went forward toward the river
where on the spindles of the reeds hung in the moonlight a weave of
silver mists.

Rabbit sat down in the midst of the blossoming grass. He was happy
that at that hour all sounds were harmonious, and that one hardly knew
whether the calls were those of quails or of crystal springs.

Were all human beings dead? There was one watching at some distance;
he was making movements above the water, and noiselessly withdrawing
his