nt up the fair garment of spring, and laid bare
the arid sternness of the South again. The nightingale still warbles
fitfully in the green bushes, but the raven, perched up yonder upon
the stark rock, croaks like a misanthrope at the quick passing away of
youth and loveliness. What sad undertones, mournful murmurs of the
deep that receives the drifted leaves, mingle with the spring's soft
flutings and all the voices that proclaim the season of joy!

While listening and day-dreaming, I was overtaken by a man and his
donkey, both old acquaintances. Every day, except Sundays and the
great Church festivals, when the peasants of the Quercy abstain from
work, like those of Brittany, this pair were in the habit of trudging
together side by side to fetch and bring back wood from the slopes of
the gorge. The ass did all the carrying, and his master the chopping
and sawing. It was a monotonous life, but both seemed to think they
were not worse off than the majority of men and donkeys. The man was
contented with his daily soup of bread-and-water, with an onion or a
leek thrown in, and a suspicion of bacon, and the beast with such
herbage as he could find while his master was getting ready another
load of wood. The man was an old soldier, who had seen some rough
service, for he was at Sedan, and was afterwards engaged in the
ghastly business of shooting down his own countrymen in Paris. But,
with all this, he was as quiet a tempered creature as his donkey,
which he treated as a friend. The army, he told me, was the best
school for learning how to treat a beast with proper consideration.

I asked why.

'Because,' replied he, 'when a soldier is caught beating a horse, he
has eight days of _salle de police_.'

Man and donkey having disappeared into a wood, my next companion was a
small blue butterfly that kept a few yards in front of me, now
stopping to look at a flower, now fluttering on again. Some insects,
as well as certain birds, appear to derive much entertainment from
watching the movements of that fantastic animal--man.

Arcadian leafiness: rocky desolation befitting the mouth of hell.
Grass and flowers on which souls might tread in the paradise of the
Florentine poet. Stony forms, monstrous, enigmatic, reared like
symbolic tokens of defeated gods, or of the worn-out evil passions
that troubled old creation before the coming of man, and the fresh
order of spiritual and carnal bewilderment. Why should I go on and
seek fur