f. One put out her tongue at me, the other bade me
follow the cows, and they both giggled and joggled each other's elbows.
The Beast of Gevaudan ate about a hundred children of this district; I
began to think of him with sympathy.

Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into another
wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker and darker. Modestine,
suddenly beginning to smell mischief, bettered the pace of her own
accord, and from that time forward gave me no trouble. It was the first
sign of intelligence I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time,
the wind freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain
came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I sighted
some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of Fouzilhic; three
houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here I found a delightful
old man, who came a little way with me in the rain to put me safely on
the road for Cheylard. He would hear of no reward, but shook his hands
above his head almost as if in menace, and refused volubly and shrilly
in unmitigated _patois_.

All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon dinner and a
fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in my bosom. Alas, and I
was on the brink of new and greater miseries! Suddenly, at a single
swoop, the night fell. I have been abroad in many a black night, but
never in a blacker. A glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it
was well beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a
tree--this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was simply
darkness overhead; even the flying clouds pursued their way invisibly to
human eyesight. I could not distinguish my hand at arm's-length from the
track, nor my goad, at the same distance, from the meadows or the sky.

Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of the
country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. Since Modestine
had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I tried her instinct in this
predicament. But the instinct of an ass is what might be expected from
the name; in half a minute she was clambering round and round among some
boulders, as lost a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have
camped long before had I been properly provided; but as this was to be
so short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and little
over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I and Modestine were
both hand