gs struck me on the face. I opened my eyes, and perceived
Brutus, who, with his fore-feet and hind-legs, was trying with
incredible activity and prodigious skill to bury me in the sand. He was
doing his best, poor beast, and from time to time he stopped to gaze at
his work; then, raising his head, he neighed and began his work again.
That lasted for a good three or four minutes, after which Brutus,
judging me doubtless sufficiently interred, placed himself very
respectfully on his knees before my tomb--on his knees, literally on his
knees! He was saying, I suppose, a little prayer. I looked at him. It
interested me extremely.

"His prayer finished, Brutus made a slight bow, went off a few steps,
stopped, then, beginning to gallop, made at least twenty times the
circuit of the open space in the middle of which he had buried me.
Brutus galloped very well, with even stride, head well held, on the
right foot, making around me a perfect circle. I followed him with my
eyes, but it made me uneasy to see him go round and round and round. I
had the strength to cry 'Stop! stop!' The horse stopped and seemed
embarrassed, without doubt asking himself what there was still to be
done; but he perceived my hat, which in my fall had got separated from
me, and at once made a new resolution: he walked straight to the hat,
seized it in his teeth, and galloped off, this time by one of the six
alleys that led from my tomb.

"Brutus got farther and farther away, and disappeared; I remained alone.
I was puzzled, positively puzzled. I shook off the little coating of
dust which covered me, and without getting up, by the help of my two
arms and right leg--to move my left leg was not to be thought of--I
succeeded in dragging myself to a little grassy slope on the edge of one
of the alleys. Once there, I could sit down, after a fashion, and I
began to shout with all the strength of my lungs, 'Hi, there! hi! hi,
there!' No answer. The woods were absolutely deserted and still. The
only thing to be done was to wait till some one passed by to aid me.

"For half an hour I had been in that hateful position when I perceived
in the distance, at the very end of the same alley by which he had gone
off, Brutus coming back, with the same long gallop he had used in going.
A great cloud of dust accompanied the horse. Little by little, in that
cloud, I perceived a tiny carriage--a pony-carriage; then in that little
pony-carriage a woman, who drove herself, and