d white horse, which the mistress wished to keep until its
natural death, because she had brought it up and had always used it, and
also because it recalled many happy memories, was housed, through sheer
kindness of heart, at the end of the stable.

A young scamp about fifteen years old, Isidore Duval by name, and called,
for convenience, Zidore, took care of this pensioner, gave him his
measure of oats and fodder in winter, and in summer was supposed to
change his pasturing place four times a day, so that he might have plenty
of fresh grass.

The animal, almost crippled, lifted with difficulty his legs, large at
the knees and swollen above the hoofs. His coat, which was no longer
curried, looked like white hair, and his long eyelashes gave to his eyes
a sad expression.

When Zidore took the animal to pasture, he had to pull on the rope with
all his might, because it walked so slowly; and the youth, bent over and
out of breath, would swear at it, exasperated at having to care for this
old nag.

The farmhands, noticing the young rascal's anger against Coco, were
amused and would continually talk of the horse to Zidore, in order to
exasperate him. His comrades would make sport with him. In the village he
was called Coco-Zidore.

The boy would fume, feeling an unholy desire to revenge himself on the
horse. He was a thin, long-legged, dirty child, with thick, coarse,
bristly red hair. He seemed only half-witted, and stuttered as though
ideas were unable to form in his thick, brute-like mind.

For a long time he had been unable to understand why Coco should be kept,
indignant at seeing things wasted on this useless beast. Since the horse
could no longer work, it seemed to him unjust that he should be fed; he
revolted at the idea of wasting oats, oats which were so expensive, on
this paralyzed old plug. And often, in spite of the orders of Maitre
Lucas, he would economize on the nag's food, only giving him half
measure. Hatred grew in his confused, childlike mind, the hatred of a
stingy, mean, fierce, brutal and cowardly peasant.

When summer came he had to move the animal about in the pasture. It was
some distance away. The rascal, angrier every morning, would start, with
his dragging step, across the wheat fields. The men working in the fields
would shout to him, jokingly:

"Hey, Zidore, remember me to Coco."

He would not answer; but on the way he would break off a switch, and, as
soon as he had moved the old ho