I
thought I remembered the place where she had disappeared, and I went in
there, putting my hands in front of my face to keep the thorns off. I
saw her almost at once through my fingers. She was quite near me. I
stretched my hands out to get hold of one of her horns, but she backed
through the branches, which flew back and struck me in the face. At
last, however, I got hold of her and brought her back to the flock.
She began again next day, and every day she did the same thing. I got
my sheep as far away as I could from the oats, and rushed after her.
She was a white goat, and the first time I saw her I thought that she
was like Madeleine. She had the same kind of eyes, set far away from
each other. When I forced her to come out of the pine trees, she
looked at me for a long time without moving her eyes, and I thought
that Madeleine must have been turned into a goat. Sometimes I told her
not to do it again, and I was quite sure that she understood me when I
told her how unkind she was. As I was struggling out of the pine wood
my hair fell all about me, and I shook my head to throw it forward.
The goat sprang to one side bleating with fear. She lowered her horns
and came at me, but I lowered my head and shook my hair at her. My
hair was long and dragged along the ground. She rushed off, leaping
this way and that. Every time she went into the pine wood I took my
revenge on her by frightening her with my hair. Master Silvain
surprised us one morning when I was butting at her. He laughed and
laughed till I didn't know which way to look. I tried to throw my hair
back quickly. The she goat came close up to me. She looked at me,
stretching her neck and wriggling her back about in the funniest way.
The farmer could not stop laughing. He bent almost double, holding his
sides and simply roared with laughter. All I could see of him were his
eyebrows, his beard, and his big hat. His shouts of laughter made me
want to cry. When he had stopped laughing he asked me all about it. I
told him how wicked the goat had been, and he shook his finger at her
and laughed again. Martine took her out next day; but the day after
she said that she would rather leave the farm than take out that she
goat again. It was possessed of the devil, she said.

Old Bibiche used to say that goats ought to be beaten, but I remembered
the only time I had beaten mine. Her ribs had made such a strange
hollow sound that I never dared touc