Amid the thyme and dew of Jean de la Fontaine Rabbit heard the hunt and clambered up the path of soft clay. He was afraid of his shadow, and the heather fled behind his swift course. Blue steeples rose from valley to valley as he descended and mounted again. His bounds curved the grass where hung the drops of dew, and he became brother to the larks in this swift flight. He flew over the county roads, and hesitated at a sign-board before he followed the country-road, which led from the blinding sunlight and the noise of the cross-roads and then lost itself in the dark, silent moss.

That day he had almost run into the twelfth milestone between Castétis and Balansun, because his eyes in which fear dwells are set on the side of his head. Abruptly he stopped. His cleft upper lip trembled imperceptibly, and disclosed his long incisor teeth. Then his stubble-colored legs which were his traveling boots with their worn and broken claws extended. And he bounded over the hedge, rolled up like a ball, with his ears flat on his back.

And again he climbed uphill for a considerable time, while the dogs, having lost his scent, were filled with disappointment, and then, he again ran downhill until he reached the road to Sauvejunte, where he saw a horse and a covered cart approaching. In the distance, on this road, there were clouds of dust as in Blue Beard when Sister Anne is asked: "Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anything coming?" This pale dryness, how magnificent it was, and how filled it was with the bitter fragrance of mint! It was not long before the horse stood in front of Rabbit.

It was a sorry nag and dragged a two wheeled cart and was unable to move except in a jerky sort of gallop. Every leap made its disjointed skeleton quiver and jolted its harness and made its earth-colored mane fly in the air, shiny and greenish, like the beard of an ancient mariner. Wearily as though they were paving-stones the animal lifted its hoofs which were swollen like tumors. Rabbit was frightened by this great animated machine which moved with so loud a noise. He bounded away and continued his flight over the meadows, with his nose toward the Pyrenees, his tail toward the lowlands, his right eye toward the rising sun, his left toward the village of Mesplède.

Finally he crouched down in the stubble, quite near a quail which was sleeping in the manner of chickens half-buried in the dust, and overcome by the heat was sweating off its fat through its feathers.

The morning was sparkling in the south. The blue sky grew pale under the heat, and became pearl-gray. A hawk in seemingly effortless flight was soaring, and describing larger and larger circles as it rose. At a distance of several hundred yards lay the peacock-blue, shimmering surface of a river, and lazily carried onward the mirrored reflection of the alders; from their viscous leaves exuded a bitter perfume, and their intense blackness cut sharply the pale luminousness of the water. Near the dam fish glided past in swarms. An angelus beat against the torrid whiteness of a church-steeple with its blue wing, and Rabbit's noonday rest began.

* * * * *

He stayed in this stubble until evening, motionless, only troubled somewhat by a cloud of mosquitoes quivering like a road in the sun. Then at dusk he made two bounds forward softly and two more to the left and to the right.

It was the beginning of the night. He went forward toward the river where on the spindles of the reeds hung in the moonlight a weave of silver mists.

Rabbit sat down in the midst of the blossoming grass. He was happy that at that hour all sounds were harmonious, and that one hardly knew whether the calls were those of quails or of crystal springs.

Were all human beings dead? There was one watching at some distance; he was making movements above the water, and noiselessly withdrawing his dripping and shimmering net. But only the heart of the waters was troubled, Rabbit's remained calm.

And, lo, between the angelicas something that looked like a ball bit by bit came into view. It was his best-beloved approaching. Rabbit ran toward her until they met deep in the blue aftercrop of grass. Their little noses touched. And for a moment in the midst of the wild sorrel, they exchanged kisses. They played. Then slowly, side by side, guided by hunger, they set out for a small farm lying low in the shadow. In the poor vegetable garden into which they penetrated there were crisp cabbages and spicy thyme. Nearby the stable was breathing; the pig protruded its mobile snout, sniffing, under the door of its sty.

Thus the night passed in eating and amatory sport. Little by little the darkness stirred beneath the dawn. Shining spots appeared in the distance. Everything began to quiver. An absurd cock, perched on the chicken-house, rent the silence. He crowed as if possessed, and clapped applause for himself with the stumps of his wings.

Rabbit and his wife went their separate ways at the threshold of the hedge of thorns and roses. Crystal-like, as it were, a village emerged from the mist, and in a field dogs with their tails as stiff as cables were busy trying to disentangle the loops so skillfully described by the charming couple amid the mint and blades of grass.

* * * * *

Rabbit took refuge in a marl-pit over which mulberries arched, and there he stayed crouching with his eyes wide-open until evening. Here he sat like a king beneath the ogive of the branches; a shower of rain had adorned them with pale-blue pearls. There he finally fell asleep. But his dream was unquiet, not like that which should come from the calm sleep of the sultry summer's afternoon. His was not the profound sleep of the lizard which hardly stirs when dreaming the dream of ancient walls; his was not the comfortable noonday sleep of the badger who sits in his dark earthen burrow and enjoys the coolness.

The slightest sound spoke to him of danger, the danger that lies in all things whether they move or fall or strike. A shadow moved unexpectedly. Was it an enemy approaching? He knew that happiness can be found in a place of refuge only when everything remains exactly the same this moment, as it was the moment before. Hence came his love of order, that is to say his immobility.

Why should a leaf stir on the eglantine in the blue calm of an idle day? When the shadows of a copse move so slowly, that it seems they are trying to stop the passage of the hours, why should they suddenly stir? Why was there this crowd of men who, not far from his retreat, were gathering the ears of maize in which the sun threaded pale beads of light? His eyelids had no lashes, and so could not bear the palpitating and dazzling light of noondays. And this alone was sufficient reason why he knew that danger lurked if he should approach those who unblinded could look into the white flames of husbandry.

There was nothing outside to lure him before the time came when he would go out of his own accord. His wisdom was in harmony with things. His life was a work of music to him, and each discordant note warned him to be cautious. He did not confuse the voice of the pack of hounds with the distant sound of bells, or the gesture of a man with that of a waving tree, or the detonation of a gun with a clap of thunder, or the latter with the rumbling of carts, or the cry of the hawk with the steam-whistle of threshing-machines. Thus there was an entire language, whose words he knew to be his enemies.

Who can say from what source Rabbit obtained this prudence and this wisdom? No one can explain these things, or tell whence or how they have come to him. Their origin is lost in the night of time where everything is all confused and one.

Did he, perhaps, come out of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat at the time when the dove, which retains the sound of great waters in its cooing, brought the olive-branch, the sign that the great wave was subsiding? Or had he been created, such as he is, with his short tail, his stubbly hide, his cleft lip, his floppy ear, and his trodden-down heel? Did God, the Eternal, set him all ready-made beneath the laurels of Paradise?

Lying crouched beneath a rosebush he had, perhaps, seen Eve, and watched her when she had wandered amid the irises, displaying the grace of her brown legs like a prancing young horse, and extending her golden breasts before the mystic pomegranates. Or was he at first nothing but an incandescent mist? Had he already lived in the heart of the porphyries? Had he, incombustible, escaped from their boiling lava, in order to inhabit each in turn the cell of granite and of the alga before he dared show his nose to the world? Did he owe his pitch-black eyes to the molten jet, his fur to the clayey ooze, his soft ears to the sea-wrack, his ardent blood to the liquid fire?

…His origins mattered little to him at this moment; he was resting peacefully in his marl-pit. It was in a sultry August toward the end of a heavy afternoon. The sky was of the deep-blue color of a plum, puffed out here and there, as if ready to burst upon the plain.

Soon the rain began to patter on the leaves of the brake. Faster and faster came the drumming of the long rods of rain. But Rabbit was not afraid, because the rain fell in accordance with a rhythm which was very familiar to him. And besides the rain did not strike him for it had not yet been able to pierce the thick vault of green above him. A single drop only fell to the bottom of the marl-pit, and splashed and always fell again at the same place.

So there was nothing in this concert to trouble the heart of Rabbit. He was quite familiar with the song in which the tears of the rain form the strophes, and he knew that neither dog, nor man, nor fox, nor hawk had any part in it. The sky was like a harp on which the silver strings of the streaming rain were strung from above down to the earth. And down here below every single thing made this harp resound in its own peculiar fashion, and in turn it again took up its own melody. Under the green fingers of the leaves the crystal strings sounded faint and hollow. It was as though it were the voice of the soul of the mists.

The clay under their touch sobbed like an adolescent girl into whom the south wind has long blown inquietude. There where the clay was thirstiest and driest was heard a continual sound as of drinking, the panting of burning lips which yielded to the fullness of the storm.

The night which followed the storm was serene. The downfall of rain had almost evaporated. On the green meadow where Rabbit was in the habit of meeting his beloved, nothing was left of the storm, except ball-like masses of mist. It looked as though they were paradisiacal cotton-plants whose downy whiteness was bursting beneath the flood of moonlight. Along the steep banks of the river the thickets, heavy with rain, stood in rows like pilgrims bowed down under the weight of their wallets and leather-bottles. Peace reigned. It was as though an angel had rested his forehead in a hand. Dawn shivering with cold was awaiting her sister the day, and the bowed-down leaves of grass prayed to the dawn.

And suddenly Rabbit crouching in the midst of his meadow saw a man approaching, and he wasn't in the least afraid of him. For the first time since the beginning of things, since man had set traps and snares the instinct of flight became extinguished in the timid soul of Rabbit.

The man, who approached, was dressed like the trunk of a tree in winter when it is clothed in the rough fustian of moss. He wore a cowl on his head and sandals on his feet. He carried no stick. His hands were clasped inside the sleeves of his robe, and a cord served as girdle. He kept his bony face turned toward the moon, and the moon was less pale than it. One could clearly distinguish his eagle's nose and his deep eyes, which were like those of asses, and his black beard on which tufts of lamb's wool had been left by the thickets.

Two doves accompanied him. They flitted from branch to branch in the sweetness of the night. The tender beat of their wings was like the fallen petals of a flower, and as if these were striving to re-unite again and expand once more into a blossom.

Three poor dogs that wore spiked collars and wagged their tails preceded the man, and an ancient wolf was licking the hem of his garment. A ewe and her lamb, bleating, uncertain, and enraptured, pressed forward amid the crocuses and trod upon their emerald, while three hawks began to play with the two doves. A timid night-bird whistled with joy amid the acorns. Then it spread its wings and overtook the hawks and the doves, the lamb and the ewe, the dogs, the wolf, and the man.

And the man approached Rabbit and said to him:

"I am Francis. I love thee and I greet thee, Oh thou, my brother. I greet thee in the name of the sky which mirrors the waters and the sparkling stones, in the name of the wild sorrel, the bark of the trees and the seeds which are thy sustenance. Come with these sinless ones who accompany me and cling to my foot-steps with the faith of the ivy which clasps the tree without considering that soon, perhaps, the woodcutter will come. Oh Rabbit, I bring to thee the Faith which we share one in another, the Faith which is life itself, all that of which we are ignorant, but in which we nevertheless believe. Oh dear and kindly Rabbit, thou gentle wanderer, wilt thou follow our Faith?"

And while Francis was speaking the beasts remained quite silent; they lay flat on the ground or perched in the twigs, and had complete faith in these words which they did not understand.

Rabbit alone, his eyes wide-open, now seemed uneasy because of the sound of this voice. He stood with one ear forward and the other back as if uncertain whether to take flight or whether to stay.

When Francis saw this he gathered a handful of grass from the meadow, and held it out to Rabbit, and now he followed him.

* * * * *

From that night they remained together.

No one could harm them, because their Faith protected them. Whenever Francis and his friends stopped in a village square where people were dancing to the drone of a bagpipe at the evening hour when the young elms were softly shading into the night and the girls were gaily raising their glasses to the evening wind at the dark tables before the inns, a circle formed about them. And the young men with their bows or cross-bows never dreamed of killing Rabbit. His tranquil manner so astounded them, that they would have deemed it a barbarous deed had they abused the faith of this poor creature, which he so trustfully placed beneath their very feet. They thought Francis was a man skilled in the taming of animals, and sometimes they opened their barns to him for the night, and gave him alms with which he bought food for his creatures, for each one that which it liked best.

And besides they easily found enough to live on, for the autumn through which they were wending was generous and the granaries were bulging. They were allowed to glean in the fields of maize and to have a share in the vintage and the songs which rose in the setting sun. Fair-haired girls held the grapes against their luminous breasts. Their raised elbows gleamed. Above the blue shadows of the chestnut trees shooting stars glided peacefully. The velvet of the heather was growing thicker. The sighing of dresses could be heard in the depth of the avenues.

They saw the sea before them, hung in space, and the sloping sails, and white sands flecked by the shadows of tamarisks, strawberry-trees, and pines. They passed through laughing meadows, where the mountain torrent, born of the pure whiteness of the snows, had become a brook, but still glistened, filled with memories of the shimmering antimony and glaciers.

Even when the hunting-horn sounded Rabbit remained quite without fear among his companions. They watched over him and he watched over them. One day a pack of hounds drew near to him, but fled again when they saw the wolf. Another time a cat crept close to the doves, but took flight before the three dogs with their spiked collars, and a ferret who lay in wait for the lamb had to seek a hiding-place from the birds of prey. Rabbit, himself, frightened away the swallows who attacked the owl.

* * * * *

Rabbit became specially attached to one of the three dogs with spiked collars. She was a spaniel, of kind disposition, and compact build. She had a stubby tail, pendant ears, and twisted paws. She was easy to get on with and polite. She had been born in a pig-pen at a cobbler's who went hunting on Sundays. When her master died, and no one wanted to give her shelter, she ran about in the fields where she met Francis.

Rabbit always walked by her side, and when she slept her muzzle lay upon him and he too fell asleep. All of them always had their noonday sleep, and under the dull fire of the sun it was filled with dreams.

Then Francis saw again the Paradise from which he had come. It seemed to him as if he were passing through the great open gate into the wonderful street on which stood the houses of the Elect. They were low huts, each like the other, in a luminous shadow which caused tears of joy to rise in the eyes. From the interior of these huts might be caught the gleam of a carpenter's plane, a hammer, or a file. The work that is sublime continues here; for, when God asked those who had come to him what reward they desired for their work on earth, they always wished to go on with that which had helped them to gain Heaven. And then suddenly their humble crafts became filled with a sort of mystery. Artisans appeared at their thresholds where tables were set for the evening meal. One heard the cheery burble of celestial wells. And in the open squares angels that had a semblance to fishing-boats, bowed down in the blessedness of the twilight.

But the animals in their dreams saw neither the earth nor Paradise as we know them and see them. They dreamed of endless plains where their senses became confused. It was like a dense fog in them. To Rabbit the baying of the hounds became all blended into one thing with the heat of the sun, sharp detonations, the feeling of wet paws, the vertigo of flight, with fright, with the smell of the clay, and the sparkle of the brook, with the waving to and fro of wild carrots and the crackling of maize, with the moonshine and the joyous emotion of seeing his mate appearing amid the fragrant meadow-sweet.

Behind their closed eyelids they all saw moving like mirrored reflections the courses of their lives. The doves, however, protected their nimble and restless, little heads from the sun; they sought for their Paradise beneath the shadow of their wings.