Blessed The Innkeeper Of Bouchet
St. Nicolas, Who Introduced Me To Their Use!
This plain wand, with an
eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a sceptre when he put it in my
hands.
Thenceforward Modestine was my slave. A prick, and she passed
the most inviting stable door. A prick, and she broke forth into a
gallant little trotlet that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable
speed, when all was said; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at
the best of it. But what a heavenly change since yesterday! No more
wielding of the ugly cudgel; no more flailing with an aching arm; no more
broadsword exercise, but a discreet and gentlemanly fence. And what
although now and then a drop of blood should appear on Modestine's mouse-
coloured wedge-like rump? I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed;
but yesterday's exploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The
perverse little devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must
even go with pricking.
It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride-legged
ladies and a pair of post-runners, the road was dead solitary all the way
to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident but one. A handsome foal
with a bell about his neck came charging up to us upon a stretch of
common, sniffed the air martially as one about to do great deeds, and
suddenly thinking otherwise in his green young heart, put about and
galloped off as he had come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long
while afterwards I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the
note of his bell; and when I struck the high-road, the song of the
telegraph-wires seemed to continue the same music.
Pradelles stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, surrounded by rich
meadows. They were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave the
neighbourhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell of hay. On
the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mounting for miles to the
horizon: a tanned and sallow autumn landscape, with black blots of fir-
wood and white roads wandering through the hills. Over all this the
clouds shed a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing,
exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief
the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one
stimulating to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and
all that I beheld lay in another county - wild Gevaudan, mountainous,
uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves.
Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveller's advance; and you
may trudge through all our comfortable Europe, and not meet with an
adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the
frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable BEAST,
the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves.
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