I tried to carry him forward with hand and knee.
But no; he stopped short after his bound, and again planted himself on
the ground more energetically and more resolutely than the first time.
Ah, then I grew angry, and my whip came into play; I grasped it firmly
and began to strike the horse with all my strength to the right and
left. But Brutus, he too lost patience, and, instead of the cold and
immovable opposition that at first he had shown, I met with furious
retaliations, strange springs, bucking, extraordinary rearing,
fantastic whirling; and in the midst of this battle, while the
infatuated horse bounded and reared, while I, exasperated, struck with
vigor the leather pommel with my broken whip, Brutus still found time to
give me glances not only of surprise and impatience, but also of anger
and indignation. While I was asking the horse for the obedience which he
refused me, it is certain that he expected from me something that I was
not doing.

"How did it end? To my shame, to my great shame, I was pitifully
unhorsed by an incomparable feat! Brutus understood, I think, that he
would not get the better of me by violence, and judged it necessary to
try cunning; after a pause which was most certainly a moment of
reflection, the horse rose up, head down, upright on his fore-feet, with
the skill, the calm, and the perfect equilibrium of a clown who walks on
his hands. Thus I tumbled into the sand, which, by good-luck, was thick
in that spot.

"I tried to get up. I screamed and fell back ridiculously, flat on my
stomach, on my nose. At the slightest movement I felt as though a knife
ran through my left leg. It's a slight matter, however--the rupture of a
slender sinew; but though slight, the injury was none the less painful.
I succeeded, nevertheless, in turning over and sitting up; but just
when, while rubbing my eyes, filled with sand, I was beginning to ask
myself what in the midst of this tumult had become of my miserable
dapple-gray, I saw over my head a large horse's hoof descending. Then
this large hoof pressed, with a certain gentleness, however, on my
chest, and pushed me delicately back on the ground, on my back this
time.

"I was greatly discouraged; and feeling incapable of another effort, I
remained in that position, continuing to ask myself what sort of a horse
I had bought at Cheri's, closing my eyes, and awaiting death.

"Suddenly I heard a curious trampling around me; a quantity of little
hard thin