and the collar. Before he had entered
his thirteenth month he had become the property of a hardware dealer,
who was accustomed to wander over the land north and south, from the
blue sea to the green mountains. They sold him for a small price,
because he was so young.

This man was a drunkard and a brute. The life of Patrasche was a life of
hell. To deal the tortures of hell on the animal creation is a way which
the Christians have of showing their belief in it. His purchaser was
a sullen, ill-living, brutal Brabantois, who heaped his cart full with
pots and pans and flagons and buckets, and other wares of crockery and
brass and tin, and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he might,
while he himself lounged idly by the side in fat and sluggish ease,
smoking his black pipe and stopping at every wineshop or cafe on the
road.

Happily for Patrasche, or unhappily, he was very strong; he came of an
iron race, long born and bred to such cruel travail; so that he did
not die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal
burdens, the scarifying lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows,
the curses, and the exhaustion which are the only wages with which the
Flemings repay the most patient and laborious of all their four-footed
victims. One day, after two years of this long and deadly agony,
Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty,
unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens. It was full midsummer,
and very warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with goods in
metal and in earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him
otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his quivering
loins. The Brabantois had paused to drink beer himself at every wayside
house, but he had forbidden Patrasche to stop a moment for a draught
from the canal. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a scorching
highway, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and, which was far
worse to him, not having tasted water for near twelve, being blind with
dust, sore with blows, and stupefied with the merciless weight which
dragged upon his loins, Patrasche staggered and foamed a little at the
mouth, and fell.

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of
the sun; he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him the
only medicine in his pharmacy--kicks and oaths and blows with a cudgel
of oak, which had been often the only food and drink, the only wage an