a uniform and purplish shadow, sad and somewhat menacing,
exaggerating height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief
the twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, but one
stimulating to a traveller. For I was now upon the limit of Velay, and
all that I beheld lay in another county--wild Gevaudan, mountainous,
uncultivated, and but recently disforested from terror of the wolves.

Wolves, alas! like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's advance, and
you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe and not meet with an
adventure worth the name. But here, if anywhere, a man was on the
frontiers of hope. For this was the land of the ever-memorable BEAST,
the Napoleon Bonaparte of wolves. What a career was his! He lived ten
months at free quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais; he ate women and
children and "shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty"; he pursued
armed horsemen; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing a post-chaise
and outrider along the king's high-road, and chaise and outrider fleeing
before him at the gallop. He was placarded like a political offender,
and ten thousand francs were offered for his head. And yet, when he was
shot and sent to Versailles, behold! a common wolf, and even small for
that. "Though I could reach from pole to pole," sang Alexander Pope; the
Little Corporal shook Europe; and if all wolves had been as this wolf
they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet has made him
the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do not wish to read again.

I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's desire
that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, "who performed many miracles,
although she was of wood," and before three-quarters of an hour I was
goading Modestine down the deep descent that leads to Langogne on the
Allier. On both sides of the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were
preparing for next spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked
stolid oxen were patiently haling at the plough. I saw one of these mild
formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in
Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying lay at an
angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the yoke like those
of caryatides below a ponderous cornice; but he screwed round his big
honest eyes and followed us with a ruminating look, until his master
bade him turn the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all
these furrowing