BOOK I
Amid the thyme and dew of Jean de
la Fontaine Rabbit heard the hunt and clambered up
the path of soft clay. He was afraid of his shadow,
and the heather fled behind his swift course.
Blue steeples rose from valley to valley as he descended
and mounted again. His bounds curved the grass
where hung the drops of dew, and he became brother
to the larks in this swift flight. He flew over
the county roads, and hesitated at a sign-board before
he followed the country-road, which led from the blinding
sunlight and the noise of the cross-roads and then
lost itself in the dark, silent moss.
That day he had almost run into the
twelfth milestone between Castetis and Balansun, because
his eyes in which fear dwells are set on the side
of his head. Abruptly he stopped. His cleft
upper lip trembled imperceptibly, and disclosed his
long incisor teeth. Then his stubble-colored
legs which were his traveling boots with their worn
and broken claws extended. And he bounded over
the hedge, rolled up like a ball, with his ears flat
on his back.
And again he climbed uphill for a
considerable time, while the dogs, having lost his
scent, were filled with disappointment, and then, he
again ran downhill until he reached the road to Sauvejunte,
where he saw a horse and a covered cart approaching.
In the distance, on this road, there were clouds of
dust as in Blue Beard when Sister Anne is asked:
“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anything
coming?” This pale dryness, how magnificent
it was, and how filled it was with the bitter fragrance
of mint! It was not long before the horse stood
in front of Rabbit.
It was a sorry nag and dragged a two
wheeled cart and was unable to move except in a jerky
sort of gallop. Every leap made its disjointed
skeleton quiver and jolted its harness and made its
earth-colored mane fly in the air, shiny and greenish,
like the beard of an ancient mariner. Wearily
as though they were paving-stones the animal lifted
its hoofs which were swollen like tumors. Rabbit
was frightened by this great animated machine which
moved with so loud a noise. He bounded away and
continued his flight over the meadows, with his nose
toward the Pyrénées, his tail toward the lowlands,
his right eye toward the rising sun, his left toward
the village of Mesplede.
Finally he crouched down in the stubble,
quite near a quail which was sleeping in the manner
of chickens half-buried in the dust, and overcome
by the heat was sweating off its fat through its feathers.
The morning was sparkling in the south.
The blue sky grew pale under the heat, and became
pearl-gray. A hawk in seemingly effortless flight
was soaring, and describing larger and larger circles
as it rose. At a distance of several hundred
yards lay the peacock-blue, shimmering surface of
a river, and lazily carried onward the mirrored reflection
of the alders; from their viscous leaves exuded a bitter
perfume, and their intense blackness cut sharply the
pale luminousness of the water. Near the dam
fish glided past in swarms. An angélus
beat against the torrid whiteness of a church-steeple
with its blue wing, and Rabbit’s noonday rest
began.
He stayed in this stubble until evening,
motionless, only troubled somewhat by a cloud of mosquitoes
quivering like a road in the sun. Then at dusk
he made two bounds forward softly and two more to the
left and to the right.
It was the beginning of the night.
He went forward toward the river where on the spindles
of the reeds hung in the moonlight a weave of silver
mists.
Rabbit sat down in the midst of the
blossoming grass. He was happy that at that hour
all sounds were harmonious, and that one hardly knew
whether the calls were those of quails or of crystal
springs.
Were all human beings dead? There
was one watching at some distance; he was making movements
above the water, and noiselessly withdrawing his dripping
and shimmering net. But only the heart of the
waters was troubled, Rabbit’s remained calm.
And, lo, between the angelicas something
that looked like a ball bit by bit came into view.
It was his best-beloved approaching. Rabbit ran
toward her until they met deep in the blue aftercrop
of grass. Their little noses touched. And
for a moment in the midst of the wild sorrel, they
exchanged kisses. They played. Then slowly,
side by side, guided by hunger, they set out for a
small farm lying low in the shadow. In the poor
vegetable garden into which they penetrated there
were crisp cabbages and spicy thyme. Nearby the
stable was breathing; the pig protruded its mobile
snout, sniffing, under the door of its sty.
Thus the night passed in eating and
amatory sport. Little by little the darkness
stirred beneath the dawn. Shining spots appeared
in the distance. Everything began to quiver.
An absurd cock, perched on the chicken-house, rent
the silence. He crowed as if possessed, and clapped
applause for himself with the stumps of his wings.
Rabbit and his wife went their separate
ways at the threshold of the hedge of thorns and roses.
Crystal-like, as it were, a village emerged from the
mist, and in a field dogs with their tails as stiff
as cables were busy trying to disentangle the loops
so skillfully described by the charming couple amid
the mint and blades of grass.
Rabbit took refuge in a marl-pit over
which mulberries arched, and there he stayed crouching
with his eyes wide-open until evening. Here he
sat like a king beneath the ogive of the branches;
a shower of rain had adorned them with pale-blue pearls.
There he finally fell asleep. But his dream was
unquiet, not like that which should come from the
calm sleep of the sultry summer’s afternoon.
His was not the profound sleep of the lizard which
hardly stirs when dreaming the dream of ancient walls;
his was not the comfortable noonday sleep of the badger
who sits in his dark earthen burrow and enjoys the
coolness.
The slightest sound spoke to him of
danger, the danger that lies in all things whether
they move or fall or strike. A shadow moved unexpectedly.
Was it an enemy approaching? He knew that happiness
can be found in a place of refuge only when everything
remains exactly the same this moment, as it was the
moment before. Hence came his love of order,
that is to say his immobility.
Why should a leaf stir on the eglantine
in the blue calm of an idle day? When the shadows
of a copse move so slowly, that it seems they are
trying to stop the passage of the hours, why should
they suddenly stir? Why was there this crowd
of men who, not far from his retreat, were gathering
the ears of maize in which the sun threaded pale beads
of light? His eyelids had no lashes, and so could
not bear the palpitating and dazzling light of noondays.
And this alone was sufficient reason why he knew that
danger lurked if he should approach those who unblinded
could look into the white flames of husbandry.
There was nothing outside to lure
him before the time came when he would go out of his
own accord. His wisdom was in harmony with things.
His life was a work of music to him, and each discordant
note warned him to be cautious. He did not confuse
the voice of the pack of hounds with the distant sound
of bells, or the gesture of a man with that of a waving
tree, or the detonation of a gun with a clap of thunder,
or the latter with the rumbling of carts, or the cry
of the hawk with the steam-whistle of threshing-machines.
Thus there was an entire language, whose words he
knew to be his enemies.
Who can say from what source Rabbit
obtained this prudence and this wisdom? No one
can explain these things, or tell whence or how they
have come to him. Their origin is lost in the
night of time where everything is all confused and
one.
Did he, perhaps, come out of Noah’s
ark on Mount Ararat at the time when the dove, which
retains the sound of great waters in its cooing, brought
the olive-branch, the sign that the great wave was
subsiding? Or had he been created, such as he
is, with his short tail, his stubbly hide, his cleft
lip, his floppy ear, and his trodden-down heel?
Did God, the Eternal, set him all ready-made beneath
the laurels of Paradise?
Lying crouched beneath a rosebush
he had, perhaps, seen Eve, and watched her when she
had wandered amid the irises, displaying the grace
of her brown legs like a prancing young horse, and
extending her golden breasts before the mystic pomegranates.
Or was he at first nothing but an incandescent mist?
Had he already lived in the heart of the porphyries?
Had he, incombustible, escaped from their boiling
lava, in order to inhabit each in turn the cell of
granite and of the alga before he dared show his nose
to the world? Did he owe his pitch-black eyes
to the molten jet, his fur to the clayey ooze, his
soft ears to the sea-wrack, his ardent blood to the
liquid fire?
...His origins mattered little to
him at this moment; he was resting peacefully in his
marl-pit. It was in a sultry August toward the
end of a heavy afternoon. The sky was of the
deep-blue color of a plum, puffed out here and there,
as if ready to burst upon the plain.
Soon the rain began to patter on the
leaves of the brake. Faster and faster came the
drumming of the long rods of rain. But Rabbit
was not afraid, because the rain fell in accordance
with a rhythm which was very familiar to him.
And besides the rain did not strike him for it had
not yet been able to pierce the thick vault of green
above him. A single drop only fell to the bottom
of the marl-pit, and splashed and always fell again
at the same place.
So there was nothing in this concert
to trouble the heart of Rabbit. He was quite
familiar with the song in which the tears of the rain
form the strophes, and he knew that neither dog, nor
man, nor fox, nor hawk had any part in it. The
sky was like a harp on which the silver strings of
the streaming rain were strung from above down to the
earth. And down here below every single thing
made this harp resound in its own peculiar fashion,
and in turn it again took up its own melody.
Under the green fingers of the leaves the crystal strings
sounded faint and hollow. It was as though it
were the voice of the soul of the mists.
The clay under their touch sobbed
like an adolescent girl into whom the south wind has
long blown inquietude. There where the clay was
thirstiest and driest was heard a continual sound as
of drinking, the panting of burning lips which yielded
to the fullness of the storm.
The night which followed the storm
was serene. The downfall of rain had almost evaporated.
On the green meadow where Rabbit was in the habit
of meeting his beloved, nothing was left of the storm,
except ball-like masses of mist. It looked as
though they were paradisiacal cotton-plants whose
downy whiteness was bursting beneath the flood of
moonlight. Along the steep banks of the river
the thickets, heavy with rain, stood in rows like
pilgrims bowed down under the weight of their wallets
and leather-bottles. Peace reigned. It was
as though an angel had rested his forehead in a hand.
Dawn shivering with cold was awaiting her sister the
day, and the bowed-down leaves of grass prayed to
the dawn.
And suddenly Rabbit crouching in the
midst of his meadow saw a man approaching, and he
wasn’t in the least afraid of him. For the
first time since the beginning of things, since man
had set traps and snares the instinct of flight became
extinguished in the timid soul of Rabbit.
The man, who approached, was dressed
like the trunk of a tree in winter when it is clothed
in the rough fustian of moss. He wore a cowl
on his head and sandals on his feet. He carried
no stick. His hands were clasped inside the sleeves
of his robe, and a cord served as girdle. He
kept his bony face turned toward the moon, and the
moon was less pale than it. One could clearly
distinguish his eagle’s nose and his deep eyes,
which were like those of asses, and his black beard
on which tufts of lamb’s wool had been left
by the thickets.
Two doves accompanied him. They
flitted from branch to branch in the sweetness of
the night. The tender beat of their wings was
like the fallen petals of a flower, and as if these
were striving to re-unite again and expand once more
into a blossom.
Three poor dogs that wore spiked collars
and wagged their tails preceded the man, and an ancient
wolf was licking the hem of his garment. A ewe
and her lamb, bleating, uncertain, and enraptured,
pressed forward amid the crocuses and trod upon their
emerald, while three hawks began to play with the
two doves. A timid night-bird whistled with joy
amid the acorns. Then it spread its wings and
overtook the hawks and the doves, the lamb and the
ewe, the dogs, the wolf, and the man.
And the man approached Rabbit and said to him:
“I am Francis. I love thee
and I greet thee, Oh thou, my brother. I greet
thee in the name of the sky which mirrors the waters
and the sparkling stones, in the name of the wild
sorrel, the bark of the trees and the seeds which
are thy sustenance. Come with these sinless ones
who accompany me and cling to my foot-steps with the
faith of the ivy which clasps the tree without considering
that soon, perhaps, the woodcutter will come.
Oh Rabbit, I bring to thee the Faith which we share
one in another, the Faith which is life itself, all
that of which we are ignorant, but in which we nevertheless
believe. Oh dear and kindly Rabbit, thou gentle
wanderer, wilt thou follow our Faith?”
And while Francis was speaking the
beasts remained quite silent; they lay flat on the
ground or perched in the twigs, and had complete faith
in these words which they did not understand.
Rabbit alone, his eyes wide-open,
now seemed uneasy because of the sound of this voice.
He stood with one ear forward and the other back as
if uncertain whether to take flight or whether to stay.
When Francis saw this he gathered
a handful of grass from the meadow, and held it out
to Rabbit, and now he followed him.
From that night they remained together.
No one could harm them, because their
Faith protected them. Whenever Francis and his
friends stopped in a village square where people were
dancing to the drone of a bagpipe at the evening hour
when the young elms were softly shading into the night
and the girls were gaily raising their glasses to
the evening wind at the dark tables before the inns,
a circle formed about them. And the young men
with their bows or cross-bows never dreamed of killing
Rabbit. His tranquil manner so astounded them,
that they would have deemed it a barbarous deed had
they abused the faith of this poor creature, which
he so trustfully placed beneath their very feet.
They thought Francis was a man skilled in the taming
of animals, and sometimes they opened their barns
to him for the night, and gave him alms with which
he bought food for his creatures, for each one that
which it liked best.
And besides they easily found enough
to live on, for the autumn through which they were
wending was generous and the granaries were bulging.
They were allowed to glean in the fields of maize and
to have a share in the vintage and the songs which
rose in the setting sun. Fair-haired girls held
the grapes against their luminous breasts. Their
raised elbows gleamed. Above the blue shadows
of the chestnut trees shooting stars glided peacefully.
The velvet of the heather was growing thicker.
The sighing of dresses could be heard in the depth
of the avenues.
They saw the sea before them, hung
in space, and the sloping sails, and white sands flecked
by the shadows of tamarisks, strawberry-trees, and
pines. They passed through laughing meadows, where
the mountain torrent, born of the pure whiteness of
the snows, had become a brook, but still glistened,
filled with memories of the shimmering antimony and
glaciers.
Even when the hunting-horn sounded
Rabbit remained quite without fear among his companions.
They watched over him and he watched over them.
One day a pack of hounds drew near to him, but fled
again when they saw the wolf. Another time a
cat crept close to the doves, but took flight before
the three dogs with their spiked collars, and a ferret
who lay in wait for the lamb had to seek a hiding-place
from the birds of prey. Rabbit, himself, frightened
away the swallows who attacked the owl.
Rabbit became specially attached to
one of the three dogs with spiked collars. She
was a spaniel, of kind disposition, and compact build.
She had a stubby tail, pendant ears, and twisted paws.
She was easy to get on with and polite. She had
been born in a pig-pen at a cobbler’s who went
hunting on Sundays. When her master died, and
no one wanted to give her shelter, she ran about in
the fields where she met Francis.
Rabbit always walked by her side,
and when she slept her muzzle lay upon him and he
too fell asleep. All of them always had their
noonday sleep, and under the dull fire of the sun
it was filled with dreams.
Then Francis saw again the Paradise
from which he had come. It seemed to him as if
he were passing through the great open gate into the
wonderful street on which stood the houses of the Elect.
They were low huts, each like the other, in a luminous
shadow which caused tears of joy to rise in the eyes.
From the interior of these huts might be caught the
gleam of a carpenter’s plane, a hammer, or a
file. The work that is sublime continues here;
for, when God asked those who had come to him what
reward they desired for their work on earth, they always
wished to go on with that which had helped them to
gain Heaven. And then suddenly their humble crafts
became filled with a sort of mystery. Artisans
appeared at their thresholds where tables were set
for the evening meal. One heard the cheery burble
of celestial wells. And in the open squares angels
that had a semblance to fishing-boats, bowed down
in the blessedness of the twilight.
But the animals in their dreams saw
neither the earth nor Paradise as we know them and
see them. They dreamed of endless plains where
their senses became confused. It was like a dense
fog in them. To Rabbit the baying of the hounds
became all blended into one thing with the heat of
the sun, sharp détonations, the feeling of wet
paws, the vertigo of flight, with fright, with the
smell of the clay, and the sparkle of the brook, with
the waving to and fro of wild carrots and the crackling
of maize, with the moonshine and the joyous emotion
of seeing his mate appearing amid the fragrant meadow-sweet.
Behind their closed eyelids they all
saw moving like mirrored reflections the courses of
their lives. The doves, however, protected their
nimble and restless, little heads from the sun; they
sought for their Paradise beneath the shadow of their
wings.
BOOK II
When winter came Francis said to his friends:
“Blessings upon you for you
are of God. But in my heart I am uneasy for the
cry of the geese that are flying southward tells that
a famine is near at hand, and that it is not in the
purposes of Heaven to make the earth kind for you.
Praised be the hidden designs of the Lord!”
The country around them, in fact,
became a barren waste. The sky let drip a yellow
light from its sack-like clouds bulging with snow.
All the fruits of the hedges had withered, and all
those of the orchards were dead. And the seeds
had left their husks to enter into the bosom of the
earth.
..."Praised be the hidden designs
of the Lord,” said Francis. “Perhaps
it is His wish that you leave me, and each of you go
your own way in quest of nourishment. Therefore
separate from me since I cannot go with each one of
you, if your instincts lead you to different lands.
For you are living and have need of nourishment, while
I am risen from the dead and am here by the grace
of God, free from all corporeal needs, a spirit as
it were who had the privilege of guiding you to this
day. But whatever knowledge I have is growing
less, and I no longer know how to provide for you.
If you wish to leave me, let the tongue of each be
loosed, and freely let each speak.”
The first to speak was the Wolf.
He raised his muzzle toward Francis.
His shaggy tail was swept by the wind. He coughed.
Misery had long been his garb. His wretched fur
made him seem like a dethroned king. He hesitated,
and cast his eye upon each one of his companions in
turn. At last his voice came from his throat,
hoarse like that of the eternal snow. And when
he opened his jaws one could measure his endless privations
by the length of his teeth. And his expression
was so wild that one could not tell whether he was
about to bite his master or to caress him.
He said:
“Oh honey without sting!
Oh brother of the poor! Oh Son of God! How
could even I leave you? My life was evil, and
you have filled it with joy. During the nights
it was my fate to lie in wait listening to the breath
of the dogs, the herdsmen, and the fires, until the
right moment came to bury my fangs in the throat of
sleeping lambs. You taught me, Oh Blessed One,
the sweetness of orchards. And even at this moment
when my belly was hollow with hunger for flesh, it
was your love for me that nourished me. Often,
indeed, my hunger has been a joy to me when I could
place my head on your sandal for I suffer this hunger
that I may follow you, and gladly I would die for your
love.”
And the doves cooed.
They stopped in their shivering flight
together among the branches of a barren tree.
They could not make up their minds to speak. Each
moment it seemed as though they were about to begin,
when in sudden fright they again filled the listening
forest with their sobbing white caresses. They
trembled like young girls who mingle their tears and
their arms. They spoke together as if they had
but a single voice:
“Oh Francis, you are more lovely
than the light of the glow-worm gleaming in the moss,
gentler than the brook which sings to us while we
hang our warm nest in the fragrant shade of the young
poplars. What matter that the hoarfrost and famine
would banish us from your side and drive us far away
to more fruitful lands? For your sake we will
love hoarfrost and famine. For the sake of your
love we will give up the things we crave. And
if we must die of the cold, Oh our Master, it will
be with heart against heart.”
And one of the dogs with the spiked
collars advanced. It was the spaniel, Rabbit’s
friend. Like the wolf she had already suffered
bitterly with hunger and her teeth chattered.
Her ears were wrinkled even when she raised them,
and her straggly tail which looked like tufts of cotton
she held out rigid and motionless. Her eyes of
the color of yellow raspberries were fixed on Francis
with the ardor of absolute Faith. And her two
companions, who trustfully were getting ready to listen
to her, lowered their heads in sign of their ignorance
and goodwill. They were shepherd dogs, who had
never heard anything but the sob of the sheep-bells,
the bleating of the flocks and the lash-like crack
of the lightning on the summits, and, proud and happy,
they waited while the little spaniel bore witness.
She took a step forward. But
not a sound came from her throat. She licked
the hand of Francis, and then lay down at his feet.
And the ewe bleated.
Her bleats were so full of sadness
that it seemed as if she were already exhaling her
soul toward death at the very thought of leaving Francis.
As she stood there in silence, her lamb, seized by
some strange melancholy, was suddenly heard, crying
like a child.
And the ewe spoke:
“Neither the placidity of grassy
meadows toned down by the mists of the dawn, nor the
sweet woods of the mountains dotted by the fog with
the pearls of its silvery sweat, nor the beds of straw
of the smoke-filled cabins, are in any way comparable
to the pasture-grounds of your heart. Rather
than leave you we should prefer the bloody and loathful
slaughter-house, and the rocking of the cart on which
we are carried thither with our legs tied and our
flanks and cheeks on the boards. Oh Francis,
it would be like unto death to us to lose you, for
we love you.”
And while the sheep spoke the owl
and the hawks, perched near one another, remained
motionless, their eyes full of anguish and their wings
pressed close to their sides lest they fly away.
The last one to speak was Rabbit.
Clothed in his fur of the color of
stubble and earth he seemed like a god of the fields.
In the midst of the wintry waste he was like a clod
of earth of the summer time. He made one think
of a road-mender or a rural postman. Tucked up
in the windings of his flapping ears he carried with
himself the agitation of all sounds. One of the
ears, extended toward the ground, listened to the
crackling of the frost, while the other, open to the
distance, gathered in the blows of an axe with which
the dead forest resounded.
“Surely, Oh Francis,”
he said, “I can be satisfied with the mossgrown
bark which has grown tender beneath the caress of the
snows and which wintry dawns have made fragrant.
More than once have I satisfied my hunger with it
during these disastrous days when the briars have
turned into rose-colored crystals, and when the agile
wagtail utters its shrill cry toward the larvae which
its beak can no longer reach beneath the ice along
the banks. I shall continue to gnaw these barks.
For, Oh Francis, I do not wish to die with these gentle
friends who are in their agony, but rather I wish
to live beside you and obtain my sustenance from the
bitter fiber of the trees.”
Therefore because the country of each
of them was a different land where each could dwell
only by himself, Rabbit’s companions chose not
to separate, but to die together in this land harrowed
by winter.
One evening the doves which had become
like dead leaves fell from the branch on which they
were perched, and the wolf closed his eyes on life,
his muzzle resting on the sandal of Francis. For
two days his neck had been so weak that it could no
longer support his head, and his spine had become
like the branch of a bramble bespattered with mud,
shivering in the wind. His master kissed him on
the forehead.
Then the lamb, the sheep-dogs, the
hawks, the owl, and the ewe gave up their souls, and
finally also the little spaniel whom Rabbit in vain
had sought to keep warm. She passed away wagging
her tail, and it grieved stubble-colored Rabbit so
much that it took until the following day before he
could touch the bark of the oaks again.
And in the midst of the world’s
desolation Francis prayed, his forehead on his clenched
hand, just as in an excess of sorrow a poet feels
his soul escaping him once more.
Then he addressed him of the cleft lip.
“Oh Rabbit, I hear a voice which
tells me that you must lead these (and he pointed
to the bodies of the animals) to Eternal Blessedness.
Oh Rabbit, there is a Paradise for beasts, but I know
it not. No man will ever enter it. Oh Rabbit,
you must guide thither these friends, whom God has
given me and whom he has taken away. You are wise
among all, and to your prudence I commit these friends.”
The words of Francis rose toward the
brightening sky. The hard azure of winter gradually
became limpid. And under this returning gladness,
it seemed as if the graceful spaniel were about to
raise her supple, silken ears again. “Oh
my friends who are dead,” said Francis, “are
you really dead, since I alone am conscious of your
death? What proof can you give to sleep that
you are not merely slumbering? Is the fruit of
the clematis asleep or is it dead when the wind
no longer ruffles the lightness of its tendrils?
Perhaps, Oh wolf, it is merely that there is no longer
sufficient breath from on high for you to raise your
flanks; and for you, doves, to make you expand like
a sigh; and for you, sheep, to cause your lamentations
by their sweetness to augment even the sweetness of
flooded pastures; and for you, owl, to reawaken your
sobbing, the plaint of the amorous night itself; and
for you, hawks, to rise soaring from the earth; and
for you, sheep-dogs, to have your barking mingle once
more with the sound of the sluices; and for you, spaniel,
to have exquisite understanding born again, that you
may play with Rabbit again?”
Suddenly Rabbit made a leap into the
azure from the molehill where he had lain down, and
did not drop back. And lightly as if he were
passing over a meadow of blue clover he made a second
bound into space, into the realm of the angels.
He had hardly completed this second
leap when he saw the little spaniel by his side, and
joyously he asked her:
“Aren’t you really dead, then?”
And skipping toward him she replied:
“I do not understand what you
are saying to me. My noonday sleep to-day was
peaceful and bright.”
Then Rabbit saw that the other animals
were following him into the void, while Francis was
journeying along another heavenly pathway, indicating
to the wolf by means of signs with his hand to put
his trust in Rabbit. And the wolf with docility
and peace in his heart felt Faith come over him again.
He continued on his way with his friends, after a
long look toward his master, and knowing that for
those who are chosen there is something divine even
in the final adieu.
They left winter behind them.
They were astonished at passing through these meadows
which formerly were so inaccessible and so far above
their heads. But the need of gaining Paradise
gave them a firm footing in the sky.
By the paths of the seraphim, along
the trellises of light, over the milky ways where
the comet is like a sheaf of grain, Rabbit guided his
companions. Francis had entrusted them to him,
and had given him to them as guide because he knew
Rabbit’s prudence. And had he not on many
occasions given his master proofs of this quality of
discretion which is the beginning of wisdom?
When Francis met him and begged him to follow, had
he not waited until Francis held out a handful of
flowering grass and let him nibble at it? And
when all his companions let themselves die of hunger
for love of one another, had not he with his down-trodden
heels continued to gnaw the bitter bark of the trees?
Therefore it seemed that this prudence
would not fail him even in heaven. If they lost
their way he would find the right road again.
He would know how not to get lost, and how not to
collide with either the sun or the moon. He would
have the skill to avoid the shooting-stars which are
as dangerous as stones thrown from a sling. He
would find the way by the heavenly sign-posts on which
were marked the number of miles that had been left
behind, as well as the names of the celestial hamlets.
The regions traversed by Rabbit and
his companions were ravishing and filled them with
ecstasy. This was all the more the case because
contrary to man, they had never suspected the beauties
of the sky; they had been able to look only sidewise
and not upward, this being the exclusive right of
the king of animals.
So it came that Short-tail, the Wolf,
the Ewe, the Lamb, the Birds, the Sheep-Dogs, the
Spaniel, discovered that the sky was as beautiful
as the earth. And all except Rabbit, who was sometimes
troubled by the problems of direction, enjoyed an
unalloyed pleasure in this pilgrimage toward God.
In place of the heavenly fields, which only a short
while ago seemed inaccessible above their heads, the
earth now became in its turn slowly inaccessible beneath
their feet. And as they moved further and further
away from it, this earth became a new heavenly canopy
for them. The blue of the oceans formed their
clouds of foam, and the candles of the shops sprinkled
like stars the expanse of the night.
Gradually they approached the regions
which Francis had promised them. Already the
rose-red clovers of the setting suns and the luminous
fruits of the darkness which were their food grew larger
and fuller and melted in their souls into the sweets
of paradise.
The leaves and ardent pulp of the
fruits filled their blood with some strange summer-like
power, a palpitating joy which made their hearts beat
faster as they came nearer and nearer the marvels that
were to be theirs.
At last they came to the abode of
the beasts, who had attained eternal bliss. It
was the first Paradise, that of the dogs.
For some time already they had heard
barking. Bending down toward the trunk of a decayed
oak they saw a mastiff sitting in a hollow as in a
niche. His disdainful and yet placid glance told
them that his mind was disordered. It was the
dog of Diogenes, to whom God had accorded solitude
in this tub, hollowed out of a very tree itself.
With indifference he watched the dogs with the spiked
collars pass by. Then to their great astonishment
he left his moss-grown kennel for a moment, and, since
his leash had become undone, tied himself fast again
using his mouth as aid. He reentered his den of
wood, and said:
“Here each one takes his pleasure where he
finds it.”
And, in fact, Rabbit and his companions
saw dogs in quest of imaginary travelers who had lost
their way. They dared descent into deep abysses
to find those who had met with accident, bearing to
them the bouillon, meat, and brandy contained in the
small casks hanging from their collars.
Others flung themselves into icy waters,
always hoping, but always in vain, that they might
rescue a shipwrecked sailor. When they regained
the shore they were shivering, stunned, yet happy in
their futile devotion, and ready to fling themselves
in again.
Others persistently begged for a couple
of old bones at the thresholds of deserted cottages
along the road, waiting for kicks, and their eyes
were filled with an inexpressible melancholy.
There was also a scissors-grinder’s
dog, who with tongue hanging out, was joyfully turning
the wheel-work which made the stone revolve, even
though no knife was held against it in the process
of sharpening. But his eyes shone with the unquestioning
faith in a duty fulfilled; he ceased not to labor
except to catch his breath, and then he labored again.
Then there was a sheep-dog, who, ever
faithful, sought to bring back to a fold ewes that
were evermore straying. He was pursuing them on
the bank of a brook which gleamed on the edge of a
grassy hill.
From this green hill and from out
of the under-woods a pack of hounds broke forth.
They had hunted the hinds and gazelles of their dreams
all the day long. Their baying which lingered
about the ancient scents sounded like the happy bells
on a flowery Easter morning.
Not far from here the sheep-dogs and
the little spaniel established their home. But
when the latter wished to bid Rabbit a tender farewell
she saw that Long-Ear had slipped away on hearing the
dogs of the chase.
And it was without him that the hawks,
the owl, the doves, the wolf, and the ewes had to
continue their flight or their progress. They
understood very well that he, a rabbit of little faith,
would not know how to die like them. Instead
of being saved by God, he preferred to save himself.
The second Paradise was that of the
birds. It lay in a fresh grove, and their songs
flooded the leaves of the alders and made them tremble.
And from the alders the songs flowed onward into the
river which became so imbued with music that it played
on the rushes.
At a distance a hill stretched out;
it was all covered with springtime and shade.
Its sides were of incomparable softness. It was
fragrant with solitude. The odor of nocturnal
lilacs mingled with that which came from the heart
of dark roses whence the hot white sun quenches its
thirst.
Now, suddenly, at intervals, the song
of the nightingale was heard expanding; it was as
if stars of crystal had fallen upon the waves and
broken there. There was no other sound but the
song of the nightingale. Over the whole expanse
of the silent hill nothing was heard but the song
of the nightingale. Night was merely the sobbing
of the nightingale.
Then in the groves dawn appeared,
all rose-red because it was naked amid the choirs
of birds who still sang from a full throat for their
wings were heavy with love and morning dew. The
quails in the grain were not yet calling. The
tom-tits with their black heads made a noise in the
thicket of fig-trees like the sound of pebbles moved
by water. A wood-pecker rent the azure with its
cry, and then flew toward the old, white-flowered
apple-trees. It had almost the appearance of a
handful of grass torn from the golden meadows with
a clover-flower as its head.
The three hawks and the owl entered
into these places abounding in flowers, and not a
single redbreast and not a single gold-finch and not
a single linnet was frightened by them. The birds
of prey sat on their perches with an arrogant and
sad air, and kept their eyes fixed on the sun; now
and then they beat their steely wings against their
mottled, keel-like breasts.
The owl sought out the shadows of
the hill, so that hidden in some solitary cavern and
happy in its darkness and wisdom, it might listen
to the plaint of the nightingale.
But the most wonderful shelter of
all was that chosen by the doves. They sat among
the olive-trees, that were stirred by the evening
breeze. In this garden young girls dwelled, who
were permitted to enter here because of their animal-like
grace. They included all the young girls who
sighed and were like to honey-suckle; all the young
girls who languish with all the doves that weep.
And all the doves were included here, those from Venice,
whose wings were like cooling fans to the boredom
of the wives of the doges, as well as those of
Iberia whose lips had the orange and tobacco-yellow
color of fisherwomen and their provocative allurement.
Here were all the doves of dreams, and all the dreaming
doves: the dove that drew Beatrice heavenward
and to which Dante gave a grain of corn; and the one
which the disenchanted Quitteria heard in the night.
Here was the dove which sobbed on Virginia’s
shoulder, when during the night she sought in vain
to calm the fires of her love in the spring underneath
a cocoanut-palm. And here too was the dove to
which the heavy-hearted maiden at the waning of summer,
in the orchard among the ripening peaches, confides
passionate messages that it may bear them along in
its flight into the unknown.
And there were the doves of old parsonages
shrouded in roses, and those which Jocelyn with his
incense-fragrant hand fed as he dreamed of Laurence.
And there was the dove which is given to the dying
little girl, and that which in certain regions is
placed upon the burning brow of the sick, and the
blinded dove whose voice is so filled with pain that
it lures the flight of its passing sisters toward
the huntsman’s ambush, and the dove, the gentlest
of all, who brings comfort to the forgotten old poet
in his garret.
The third paradise was that of the sheep.
It lay in the heart of an emerald
valley watered by streams, and beneath their sun-bathed
crystal the grass was of a marvelous green. And
nearby was a lake, iridescent like mother-of-pearl
and the feathers of a peacock; it was azure and glistened
like mica, and seemed to be the breast of humming-birds
and the wing of butterflies. Here after they
had licked the pure white salt from the golden-grained
granite, the sheep dreamed their long dream, and their
tufts of thick wool overlapped like the leaves of
great branches covered with snow.
This landscape was so pure and of
such dreamlike clarity that it had whitened the eye-lashes
of the lambs, and had entered into their eyes of gold.
And the atmosphere was so transparent that it seemed
one could see in the depth of the water clearly revealed
the outlines of the yellow-striped summits of limestone.
Flowers of frost, of sky, and of blood were woven
into the carpets of the forests of beech and fir.
After having passed over them the breeze went forth
again even more softly, more fragrant, more ice-like
in its purity.
Like a blue flood the marvelous cone-like
trees, interwoven with silvery lichens, stretched
upward. Waterfalls as if suspended from the rocky
crags, scattered in a smoke-like spray. And suddenly
the heavenly flocks sent forth their bleating toward
God, and the ecstatic bells wept for the shadow of
the ferns. And the dark water of the grottoes
broke in the light.
Lying amid the wild laurel the lamb
of the Gospel became visible again. Its paw rested
under its nose, and was still bleeding. The roads
over which it had passed had been hard, but soon it
would be fully restored by the slightly acid sweetness
of the myrtles. Even now it was quivering as
it listened to its scattered companions.
On entering this Paradise to dwell
therein the sheep of Francis saw the lamb of Jean
de la Fontaine amid the forget-me-nots which were
of the mirror-like color of the waves. It no longer
disputed with the wolf of the fable. It drank,
and the water did not become turbid thereat.
The untamed spring over which the two hundred year
old ivy seemed to have thrown a shadow of bitterness,
streamed on amid the grass with its broken waves in
which were mirrored the snowy tremblings of the lamb.
And high on the slopes of the happy
valleys they saw the sheep of those heroes that
Cervantes tells about, all of whom were sick at heart
for the love of one and the same girl and left their
city to lead the life of shepherds in a far-away country.
These sheep had the gentlest of voices, like hearts
that secretly love their own sufferings. They
drank from the wild thyme the always new, burning
tears which their bucolic poets had let fall like dew
from the cups of their eyes.
At the horizon of this Paradise there
rose a confused murmur like that of the Ocean.
It consisted of the broken sobbing of flutes or clarinets,
of cries reechoed from the abysses, of the baying of
restless dogs, and of the fall of a moss-covered stone
into the void. It was the tumult of the waterfalls
high above the noise of the torrents. It was
like the voice of a people on the march toward the
promised land, toward the grapes without name, toward
the fiery spikes of grain; and mingled with this sound
was the braying of pregnant she-asses, that were laden
with heavy containers of milk and the mantles of the
herdsmen and salt and cheeses which were brittle like
chalk.
The fourth Paradise in its almost
indescribable barrenness was that of the wolves.
At the summit of a treeless mountain,
in the desolation of the wind, beneath a penetrating
fog, they felt the voluptuous joy of martyrdom.
They sustained themselves with their hunger. They
experienced a bitter joy in feeling that they were
abandoned, that never for more than an instant and
then only under the greatest suffering had
they been able to renounce their lust for blood.
They were the disinherited, possessed of the dream
that could never be realized. For a long time
they had not been able to approach the heavenly lambs
whose white eyelashes winked in the green light.
And as none of these animals ever died, they could
no longer lie in wait for the body which the shepherd
threw to the eternal laughter of the torrent.
And the wolves were resigned.
Their fur, bald as the rock, was pitiable. A
sort of miserable grandeur reigned in this strange
abode. One felt that this destitution was so
tragic and so inexorable that one would have tenderly
kissed the forehead of these poor flesh-eating beasts
even had one surprised them in slaying the lambs.
The beauty of this Paradise in which the friend of
Francis now found his home was that of desolation
and hopeless despair.
And beyond this region the heaven
of the beasts stretched on to infinity.
BOOK III
As for Rabbit, he had prudently taken
flight at sight of the heavenly pack of hounds.
While Francis had remained near him he had trusted
in Francis. But now, even though he was in the
abode of the Blessed, his distrust which was as natural
to him as to the suspicious peasant gained the upper
hand again. And since he did not yet feel himself
entirely at home in this Paradise, tasting neither
perfect security, nor the thrill of familiar danger
against which he could battle, Long-Ear became bewildered.
Accordingly he strayed hither and
thither, ill at ease, not knowing where he was, nor
finding his way. He sought in vain for that from
which he fled and that which fled from him. But
what was the reason for this? Was not Heaven
happiness? Was there any stillness that could
be more still? In what other resting-place could
Cleft-Lip have dreamed a sleep more undisturbed than
on these beds of wool that the breeze spread beneath
the flower-covered bushes of the stars?
But he did not sleep here, because
he missed his constant uneasiness and other things.
Crouching in the ditches of Heaven he no longer had
the feeling beneath the whiteness of his short tail
of the chilly dampness penetrating through and through
him. The mosquitoes, who had withdrawn to their
own Paradise of shallow pools, no longer filled his
always open eyelids with the sharp burning sensation
of summer. He longed regretfully for this fever.
His heart no longer beat as powerfully as it had beaten
when on knolls in the flame-colored heath a shot scattered
the earth like rain about him. Under the smooth
caress of the lawn-like grass hair grew again on the
callous parts of his paws where it had been so sparse.
And he began to deplore the over-abundance of heaven.
He was like the gardener who, having become king,
was forced to put on sandals of purple, and longed
regretfully for his wooden shoes heavy with clay and
with poverty.
And Francis in his Paradise heard
of Rabbit’s troubles and of his bewilderment.
And the heart of Francis was grieved that one of his
old companions was not happy. From that moment
the streets of the celestial hamlet where he dwelled
seemed less peaceful to him, the shadows of the evening
less soft, less white the breath of the lilies, less
hallowed the gleams of the carpenter’s plane
within the sheds, less bright the singing pitchers
whose water radiated like fresh sheaves and fell cooling
upon the flesh of the angels seated on the curb-stones
of the wells.
Therefore Francis set out on his way
to find God, and He received him in His Garden at
the close of day. This garden of God was the most
humble but also the most beautiful. No one knew
whence came the miracle of its beauty. Perhaps
because there was nothing in it but love. Over
the walls which the ages had filled with chinks dark
lilacs spread. The stones were joyous to support
the smiling mosses whose golden mouths were drinking
at the shadowy heart of the violets.
In a diffused light which was neither
like that of the dawn nor like that of the twilight,
for it was softer than either of these, a blue-flowered
leek blossomed in the center of a garden-bed.
A sort of mystery enveloped the blue globe of its
inflorescence which remained motionless and closed
on its tall stalk. One felt that this plant was
dreaming. Of what? Perhaps of its soul’s
labor which sings on winter evenings in the pot where
boils the soup of the poor. Oh divine destiny!
Not far from the hedges of boxwood the lips of the
lettuce radiated mute words while a low light clung
about the shadow of the sleeping watering-pots.
Their task was over.
And full of trust and serenity, without
pride or humility, a sage-plant let its insignificant
odor rise toward God.
Francis sat down beside God on a bench
sheltered by an oak round which an ivy twined.
And God said unto Francis:
“I know what brings thee hither.
It shall never be said that there was any one, whether
maggot or rabbit, who was unable to find his Paradise
here. Go therefore to thy fleet-footed friend,
and ask him what it is that he desires. And as
soon as he has told thee, I shall grant him his wish.
If he did not understand how to die and to renounce
the world like the others, it was surely because his
heart clove too much to my Earth which, indeed, I
love well. Because, Oh Francis, like this creature
of the long ears I love the earth with a profound love.
I love the earth of men, of beasts, of plants, and
of stones. Oh Francis, go and find Rabbit, and
tell him that I am his friend.”
And Francis set out toward the Paradise
of beasts where none of the children of man except
young girls had ever set their foot. There he
met Rabbit who was disconsolately wandering about.
But when Rabbit saw his old master approaching he
experienced such joy that he crouched down with more
fright in his eye than ever and with his nostrils
quivering almost imperceptibly.
“Greeting, my brother,”
said Francis, “I heard the sufferings of your
heart, and I have come here to learn the reason for
your sadness. Have you eaten too many bitter
kernels of grain? Why have you not found the
peace of the doves, and of the lambs which are also
white...? Oh harvester of the second crop, for
what do you search so restlessly here where there
is no more restlessness, and where never more will
you feel the hunting-dogs’ breath on your poor
skin?”
“Oh my friend,” answered
he, “what am I seeking? I am seeking my
God. As long as you were my God on earth I felt
at peace. But in this Paradise where I have lost
my way, because your presence is no longer with me,
Oh divine brother of the beast, my soul feels suffocated
for I do not find my God.”
“Do you think, then,”
said Francis, “that God abandons rabbits, and
that they alone of the whole world have no title to
Paradise?”
“No,” Rabbit replied,
“I have given no thought to such things.
I would have followed you because I came to know you
as intimately as the earthly hedge on which the lambs
hung the warm flakes of snow with which I used to
line and keep warm my nest. Vainly I have sought
throughout these heavenly meadows this God of whom
you are speaking. But while my companions discovered
Him at once and found their Paradise, I lost my way.
From the day when you left us and from the instant
that I gained Heaven, my childish and untamed heart
has beaten with homesickness for the earth.
“Oh Francis, Oh my friend, Oh
you in whom alone I have faith, give back to me my
earth. I feel that I am not at home here.
Give back to me my furrows full of mud, give back
to me my clayey paths. Give back to me my native
valley where the horns of the hunters make the mists
stir. Give back to me the wagon-track on the roadway
from which I heard sound the packs of hounds with
their hanging ears, like an angélus. Give
back to me my timidity. Give back to me my fright.
Give back to me the agitation that I felt when suddenly
a shot swept the fragrant mint beneath my bounds,
or when amid the bushes of wild quince my nose touched
the cold copper of a snare. Give back to me the
dawn upon the waters from which the skillful fisherman
withdraws his lines heavy with eels. Give back
to me the blue gleaning under the moon, and my timid
and clandestine loves amid the wild sorrel, where
I could no longer distinguish the rosy tongue of my
beloved from the dew-laden petal of the eglantine
which had fallen upon the grass. Give back to
me my weakness, oh thou, my dear heart. And go,
and say unto God, that I can no longer live with Him.”
“Oh Rabbit,” Francis answered,
“my friend, gentle and suspicious like a peasant,
Oh Rabbit of little faith, you blaspheme. If you
have not known how to find your God it is because
in order to find this God, you would have had to die
like your companions.”
“But if I die, what will become
of me?” cried he with the hide of the color
of stubble.
And Francis said:
“If you die you will become your Paradise.”
Thus talking they reached the edge
of the Paradise of beasts. There the Paradise
of men began. Rabbit turned his head, and read
at the top of a sign-post on a plate of blue cast-iron
where an arrow indicated the direction
Castetis to Balansun 5 M.
The day was so hot that the letters
of the inscription seemed to quiver in the dull light
of summer. In the distance, on the road, there
were clouds of dust, as in Blue Beard when Sister Anne
is asked: “Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do
you see anything coming?” This pale dryness,
how magnificent it was, and how filled it was with
the bitter fragrance of mint.
And Rabbit saw a horse and a covered cart approaching.
It was a sorry nag and dragged a two-wheeled
cart and was unable to move except in a jerky sort
of gallop. Every leap made its disjointed skeleton
quiver and jolted its harness and made its earth-colored
mane fly in the air, shiny and greenish, like the beard
of an ancient mariner. Wearily as though they
were paving-stones the animal lifted its hoofs which
were swollen like tumors....
Then a doubt, stronger than all the
doubts which hitherto had assailed the soul of Rabbit,
pierced him.
This doubt was a leaden grain of shot
which had just passed through the nape of his neck
behind his long ears into his brain. A veil of
blood more beautiful than the glowing autumn floated
before his eyes in which the shadows of eternity rose.
He cried out. The fingers of a huntsman pinioned
his throat, strangled him, suffocated him. His
heart-beat grew weaker and weaker; this heart which
used to flutter like the pale wild rose in the wind
dissolving at the morning hour when the hedge softly
caresses the lambs. An instant he remained motionless,
hollow-flanked and drawn-out like Death itself in the
grasp of his murderer. Then poor old Rabbit leaped
up. He clawed in vain for the ground which he
could no longer reach because the man did not let
go of him. Rabbit passed away drop by drop.
Suddenly his hair stood erect, and
he became like unto the stubble of summer where he
formerly dwelled beside his sister, the quail, and
the poppy, his brother; and like unto the clayey earth
which had wetted his beggar’s paws; and like
unto the gray-brown color with which September days
clothe the hill whose shape he had assumed; like unto
the rough cloth of Francis; like unto the wagon-track
on the roadway from which he heard the packs of hounds
with hanging ears, singing like the angélus;
like unto the barren rock which the wild thyme loves.
In his look where now floated a mist of bluish night
there was something like unto the blessed meadow where
the heart of his beloved awaited him at the heart
of the wild sorrel. The tears which he shed were
like unto the fountain of the seraphs at which sat
the old fisher of eels repairing his lines. He
was like unto life, like unto death, like unto himself,
like unto his Paradise.