. Michel wild horses cropped the coarse grass.

Days flowed by like water from the fountains, and the centuries passed
like drops falling from the ends of stalactites. Hunters came to chase
the bears upon the hills that covered the forgotten city; shepherds led
their flocks upon them; labourers turned up the soil with their ploughs;
gardeners cultivated their lettuces and grafted their pear trees. They
were not rich, and they had no arts. The walls of their cabins were
covered with old vines and roses, A goat-skin clothed their tanned
limbs, while their wives dressed themselves with the wool that they
themselves had spun. The goat-herds moulded little figures of men and
animals out of clay, or sang songs about the young girl who follows her
lover through woods or among the browsing goats while the pine trees
whisper together and the water utters its murmuring sound. The master of
the house grew angry with the beetles who devoured his figs; he planned
snares to protect his fowls from the velvet-tailed fox, and he poured
out wine for his neighbours saying:

"Drink! The flies have not spoilt my vintage; the vines were dry before
they came."

Then in the course of ages the wealth of the villages and the corn
that filled the fields were pillaged by barbarian invaders. The country
changed its masters several times. The conquerors built castles upon the
hills; cultivation increased; mills, forges, tanneries, and looms were
established; roads were opened through the woods and over the marshes;
the river was covered with boats. The hamlets became large villages and
joining together formed a town which protected itself by deep trenches
and lofty walls. Later, becoming the capital of a great State, it found
itself straitened within its now useless ramparts and it converted them
into grass-covered walks.

It grew very rich and large beyond measure. The houses were never high
enough to satisfy the people; they kept on making them still higher
and built them of thirty or forty storeys, with offices, shops, banks,
societies one above another; they dug cellars and tunnels ever deeper
downwards. Fifteen millions of men laboured in the giant town.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Penguin Island, by Anatole France

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