he 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 e