sed one another of ruining the human race, and
at the same time praised themselves tremendously. As far as I could
see Water was right, but the cowherd said that Wine was not wrong. We
used to sit and talk together for hours. He would tell me of his own
home, which was a long way off from Sologne. He told me that he had
always been a cowherd, and that when he was a child a bull had knocked
him down and hurt him. He had been ill a long time after that, and the
pains in his limbs had made him scream. Then the pains had gone away,
but he had become all twisted up as I saw him now. He remembered the
names of all the farms where he had been cowherd. Some of the farmers
were kind, and some were not, but he had never come across such kind
masters as at Villevieille. He said, too, that Master Silvain's cows
were not a bit like those of his own country, which were small, and had
horns like pointed spindles. The Villevieille cows were big, strong
animals with rough crumpled horns. He was very fond of them and used
to call each one by name when he talked to them. The one he liked best
was a beautiful white cow which Master Silvain had bought in the
spring. She was always lifting her head and looking into the distance,
and then all of a sudden she would start off at a run. The cowherd
used to call out, "Stop where you are, Blanche! Stop!" She usually
obeyed him, but sometimes he had to send the dog after her. Sometimes,
too, she used to try and run even when the dog stopped her, and would
only come back to the herd when the dog bit her muzzle. The cowherd
used to pity her because, he said, he couldn't say what or whom she was
regretting.

In the month of December the cows remained in the stables. I thought
that we should keep the sheep in too, but the farmer's brother
explained to me that Sologne was a very poor country, and that the
farmers could not make enough forage to feed the sheep, as well. So
now I used to go off all by myself with the sheep down the meadows and
into the woods. All the birds had gone. Mist spread over the ploughed
fields and the woods were full of silence.

There were days when I felt so lonely that I began to believe that the
earth had fallen all to pieces round me, and when a crow cawed as it
flew past in the grey sky its great hoarse voice seemed to me to be
singing of the misfortunes of the world. Even the sheep were quiet. A
dealer had taken away all the lambs, and the li