nning with both arms, then, lifting one leg,
they strike it hard with a blow of the edge of a steel instrument
attached to each foot. The edge penetrates the wood, and remains stuck
in it; and the man rises up as if on a step in order to strike with the
steel attached to the other foot, and once more supports himself till he
lifts his first foot again.

And with every upward movement he raises higher the rope collar which
fastens him to the tree. Over his loins, hangs and glitters the steel
hatchet. He keeps continually clinging on in an easy fashion like a
parasitic creature attacking a giant; he mounts slowly up the immense
trunk, embracing it and spurring it in order to decapitate it.

As soon as he reaches the first branches, he stops, detaches from his
side the sharp ax, and strikes. He strikes slowly, methodically, cutting
the limb close to the trunk, and, all of a sudden, the branch cracks,
gives away, bends, tears itself off, and falls down grazing the
neighboring trees in its fall. Then, it crashes down on the ground with
a great sound of broken wood, and its slighter branches keep quivering
for a long time.

The soil was covered with fragments which other men cut in their turn,
bound in bundles, and piled in heaps, while the trees which were still
left standing seemed like enormous posts, gigantic forms amputated and
shorn by the keen steel of the cutting instruments.

And when the lopper had finished his task, he left at the top of the
straight slender shaft of the tree the rope collar which he had brought
up with him, and afterwards descends again with spurlike prods along the
discrowned trunk, which the woodcutters thereupon attacked at the base,
striking it with great blows which resounded through all the rest of the
wood.

When the foot seemed pierced deeply enough, some men commenced dragging
to the accompaniment of a cry in which they joined harmoniously, at the
rope attached to the top; and, all of a sudden, the immense mast cracked
and tumbled to the earth with the dull sound and shock of a distant
cannon-shot.

And each day the wood grew thinner, losing its trees which fell down one
by one, as an army loses its soldiers.

Renardet no longer walked up and down. He remained from morning till
night, contemplating, motionless, and with his hands behind his back the
slow death of his wood. When a tree fell, he placed his foot on it as if
it were a corpse. Then he raised his eyes to the next with a