When winter came Francis said to his friends:

"Blessings upon you for you are of God. But in my heart I am uneasy for the cry of the geese that are flying southward tells that a famine is near at hand, and that it is not in the purposes of Heaven to make the earth kind for you. Praised be the hidden designs of the Lord!"

The country around them, in fact, became a barren waste. The sky let drip a yellow light from its sack-like clouds bulging with snow. All the fruits of the hedges had withered, and all those of the orchards were dead. And the seeds had left their husks to enter into the bosom of the earth.

…"Praised be the hidden designs of the Lord," said Francis. "Perhaps it is His wish that you leave me, and each of you go your own way in quest of nourishment. Therefore separate from me since I cannot go with each one of you, if your instincts lead you to different lands. For you are living and have need of nourishment, while I am risen from the dead and am here by the grace of God, free from all corporeal needs, a spirit as it were who had the privilege of guiding you to this day. But whatever knowledge I have is growing less, and I no longer know how to provide for you. If you wish to leave me, let the tongue of each be loosed, and freely let each speak."

The first to speak was the Wolf.

He raised his muzzle toward Francis. His shaggy tail was swept by the wind. He coughed. Misery had long been his garb. His wretched fur made him seem like a dethroned king. He hesitated, and cast his eye upon each one of his companions in turn. At last his voice came from his throat, hoarse like that of the eternal snow. And when he opened his jaws one could measure his endless privations by the length of his teeth. And his expression was so wild that one could not tell whether he was about to bite his master or to caress him.

He said:

"Oh honey without sting! Oh brother of the poor! Oh Son of God! How could even I leave you? My life was evil, and you have filled it with joy. During the nights it was my fate to lie in wait listening to the breath of the dogs, the herdsmen, and the fires, until the right moment came to bury my fangs in the throat of sleeping lambs. You taught me, Oh Blessed One, the sweetness of orchards. And even at this moment when my belly was hollow with hunger for flesh, it was your love for me that nourished me. Often, indeed, my hunger has been a joy to me when I could place my head on your sandal for I suffer this hunger that I may follow you, and gladly I would die for your love."

And the doves cooed.

They stopped in their shivering flight together among the branches of a barren tree. They could not make up their minds to speak. Each moment it seemed as though they were about to begin, when in sudden fright they again filled the listening forest with their sobbing white caresses. They trembled like young girls who mingle their tears and their arms. They spoke together as if they had but a single voice:

"Oh Francis, you are more lovely than the light of the glow-worm gleaming in the moss, gentler than the brook which sings to us while we hang our warm nest in the fragrant shade of the young poplars. What matter that the hoarfrost and famine would banish us from your side and drive us far away to more fruitful lands? For your sake we will love hoarfrost and famine. For the sake of your love we will give up the things we crave. And if we must die of the cold, Oh our Master, it will be with heart against heart."

And one of the dogs with the spiked collars advanced. It was the spaniel, Rabbit's friend. Like the wolf she had already suffered bitterly with hunger and her teeth chattered. Her ears were wrinkled even when she raised them, and her straggly tail which looked like tufts of cotton she held out rigid and motionless. Her eyes of the color of yellow raspberries were fixed on Francis with the ardor of absolute Faith. And her two companions, who trustfully were getting ready to listen to her, lowered their heads in sign of their ignorance and goodwill. They were shepherd dogs, who had never heard anything but the sob of the sheep-bells, the bleating of the flocks and the lash-like crack of the lightning on the summits, and, proud and happy, they waited while the little spaniel bore witness.

She took a step forward. But not a sound came from her throat. She licked the hand of Francis, and then lay down at his feet.

And the ewe bleated.

Her bleats were so full of sadness that it seemed as if she were already exhaling her soul toward death at the very thought of leaving Francis. As she stood there in silence, her lamb, seized by some strange melancholy, was suddenly heard, crying like a child.

And the ewe spoke:

"Neither the placidity of grassy meadows toned down by the mists of the dawn, nor the sweet woods of the mountains dotted by the fog with the pearls of its silvery sweat, nor the beds of straw of the smoke-filled cabins, are in any way comparable to the pasture-grounds of your heart. Rather than leave you we should prefer the bloody and loathful slaughter-house, and the rocking of the cart on which we are carried thither with our legs tied and our flanks and cheeks on the boards. Oh Francis, it would be like unto death to us to lose you, for we love you."

And while the sheep spoke the owl and the hawks, perched near one another, remained motionless, their eyes full of anguish and their wings pressed close to their sides lest they fly away.

The last one to speak was Rabbit.

Clothed in his fur of the color of stubble and earth he seemed like a god of the fields. In the midst of the wintry waste he was like a clod of earth of the summer time. He made one think of a road-mender or a rural postman. Tucked up in the windings of his flapping ears he carried with himself the agitation of all sounds. One of the ears, extended toward the ground, listened to the crackling of the frost, while the other, open to the distance, gathered in the blows of an axe with which the dead forest resounded.

"Surely, Oh Francis," he said, "I can be satisfied with the mossgrown bark which has grown tender beneath the caress of the snows and which wintry dawns have made fragrant. More than once have I satisfied my hunger with it during these disastrous days when the briars have turned into rose-colored crystals, and when the agile wagtail utters its shrill cry toward the larvae which its beak can no longer reach beneath the ice along the banks. I shall continue to gnaw these barks. For, Oh Francis, I do not wish to die with these gentle friends who are in their agony, but rather I wish to live beside you and obtain my sustenance from the bitter fiber of the trees."

* * * * *

Therefore because the country of each of them was a different land where each could dwell only by himself, Rabbit's companions chose not to separate, but to die together in this land harrowed by winter.

One evening the doves which had become like dead leaves fell from the branch on which they were perched, and the wolf closed his eyes on life, his muzzle resting on the sandal of Francis. For two days his neck had been so weak that it could no longer support his head, and his spine had become like the branch of a bramble bespattered with mud, shivering in the wind. His master kissed him on the forehead.

Then the lamb, the sheep-dogs, the hawks, the owl, and the ewe gave up their souls, and finally also the little spaniel whom Rabbit in vain had sought to keep warm. She passed away wagging her tail, and it grieved stubble-colored Rabbit so much that it took until the following day before he could touch the bark of the oaks again.

* * * * *

And in the midst of the world's desolation Francis prayed, his forehead on his clenched hand, just as in an excess of sorrow a poet feels his soul escaping him once more.

Then he addressed him of the cleft lip.

"Oh Rabbit, I hear a voice which tells me that you must lead these (and he pointed to the bodies of the animals) to Eternal Blessedness. Oh Rabbit, there is a Paradise for beasts, but I know it not. No man will ever enter it. Oh Rabbit, you must guide thither these friends, whom God has given me and whom he has taken away. You are wise among all, and to your prudence I commit these friends."

The words of Francis rose toward the brightening sky. The hard azure of winter gradually became limpid. And under this returning gladness, it seemed as if the graceful spaniel were about to raise her supple, silken ears again. "Oh my friends who are dead," said Francis, "are you really dead, since I alone am conscious of your death? What proof can you give to sleep that you are not merely slumbering? Is the fruit of the clematis asleep or is it dead when the wind no longer ruffles the lightness of its tendrils? Perhaps, Oh wolf, it is merely that there is no longer sufficient breath from on high for you to raise your flanks; and for you, doves, to make you expand like a sigh; and for you, sheep, to cause your lamentations by their sweetness to augment even the sweetness of flooded pastures; and for you, owl, to reawaken your sobbing, the plaint of the amorous night itself; and for you, hawks, to rise soaring from the earth; and for you, sheep-dogs, to have your barking mingle once more with the sound of the sluices; and for you, spaniel, to have exquisite understanding born again, that you may play with Rabbit again?"

* * * * *

Suddenly Rabbit made a leap into the azure from the molehill where he had lain down, and did not drop back. And lightly as if he were passing over a meadow of blue clover he made a second bound into space, into the realm of the angels.

He had hardly completed this second leap when he saw the little spaniel by his side, and joyously he asked her:

"Aren't you really dead, then?"

And skipping toward him she replied:

"I do not understand what you are saying to me. My noonday sleep to-day was peaceful and bright."

Then Rabbit saw that the other animals were following him into the void, while Francis was journeying along another heavenly pathway, indicating to the wolf by means of signs with his hand to put his trust in Rabbit. And the wolf with docility and peace in his heart felt Faith come over him again. He continued on his way with his friends, after a long look toward his master, and knowing that for those who are chosen there is something divine even in the final adieu.

* * * * *

They left winter behind them. They were astonished at passing through these meadows which formerly were so inaccessible and so far above their heads. But the need of gaining Paradise gave them a firm footing in the sky.

By the paths of the seraphim, along the trellises of light, over the milky ways where the comet is like a sheaf of grain, Rabbit guided his companions. Francis had entrusted them to him, and had given him to them as guide because he knew Rabbit's prudence. And had he not on many occasions given his master proofs of this quality of discretion which is the beginning of wisdom? When Francis met him and begged him to follow, had he not waited until Francis held out a handful of flowering grass and let him nibble at it? And when all his companions let themselves die of hunger for love of one another, had not he with his down-trodden heels continued to gnaw the bitter bark of the trees?

Therefore it seemed that this prudence would not fail him even in heaven. If they lost their way he would find the right road again. He would know how not to get lost, and how not to collide with either the sun or the moon. He would have the skill to avoid the shooting-stars which are as dangerous as stones thrown from a sling. He would find the way by the heavenly sign-posts on which were marked the number of miles that had been left behind, as well as the names of the celestial hamlets.

The regions traversed by Rabbit and his companions were ravishing and filled them with ecstasy. This was all the more the case because contrary to man, they had never suspected the beauties of the sky; they had been able to look only sidewise and not upward, this being the exclusive right of the king of animals.

So it came that Short-tail, the Wolf, the Ewe, the Lamb, the Birds, the Sheep-Dogs, the Spaniel, discovered that the sky was as beautiful as the earth. And all except Rabbit, who was sometimes troubled by the problems of direction, enjoyed an unalloyed pleasure in this pilgrimage toward God. In place of the heavenly fields, which only a short while ago seemed inaccessible above their heads, the earth now became in its turn slowly inaccessible beneath their feet. And as they moved further and further away from it, this earth became a new heavenly canopy for them. The blue of the oceans formed their clouds of foam, and the candles of the shops sprinkled like stars the expanse of the night.

Gradually they approached the regions which Francis had promised them. Already the rose-red clovers of the setting suns and the luminous fruits of the darkness which were their food grew larger and fuller and melted in their souls into the sweets of paradise.

The leaves and ardent pulp of the fruits filled their blood with some strange summer-like power, a palpitating joy which made their hearts beat faster as they came nearer and nearer the marvels that were to be theirs.

* * * * *

At last they came to the abode of the beasts, who had attained eternal bliss. It was the first Paradise, that of the dogs.

For some time already they had heard barking. Bending down toward the trunk of a decayed oak they saw a mastiff sitting in a hollow as in a niche. His disdainful and yet placid glance told them that his mind was disordered. It was the dog of Diogenes, to whom God had accorded solitude in this tub, hollowed out of a very tree itself. With indifference he watched the dogs with the spiked collars pass by. Then to their great astonishment he left his moss-grown kennel for a moment, and, since his leash had become undone, tied himself fast again using his mouth as aid. He reëntered his den of wood, and said:

"Here each one takes his pleasure where he finds it."

And, in fact, Rabbit and his companions saw dogs in quest of imaginary travelers who had lost their way. They dared descent into deep abysses to find those who had met with accident, bearing to them the bouillon, meat, and brandy contained in the small casks hanging from their collars.

Others flung themselves into icy waters, always hoping, but always in vain, that they might rescue a shipwrecked sailor. When they regained the shore they were shivering, stunned, yet happy in their futile devotion, and ready to fling themselves in again.

Others persistently begged for a couple of old bones at the thresholds of deserted cottages along the road, waiting for kicks, and their eyes were filled with an inexpressible melancholy.

There was also a scissors-grinder's dog, who with tongue hanging out, was joyfully turning the wheel-work which made the stone revolve, even though no knife was held against it in the process of sharpening. But his eyes shone with the unquestioning faith in a duty fulfilled; he ceased not to labor except to catch his breath, and then he labored again.

Then there was a sheep-dog, who, ever faithful, sought to bring back to a fold ewes that were evermore straying. He was pursuing them on the bank of a brook which gleamed on the edge of a grassy hill.

From this green hill and from out of the under-woods a pack of hounds broke forth. They had hunted the hinds and gazelles of their dreams all the day long. Their baying which lingered about the ancient scents sounded like the happy bells on a flowery Easter morning.

Not far from here the sheep-dogs and the little spaniel established their home. But when the latter wished to bid Rabbit a tender farewell she saw that Long-Ear had slipped away on hearing the dogs of the chase.

And it was without him that the hawks, the owl, the doves, the wolf, and the ewes had to continue their flight or their progress. They understood very well that he, a rabbit of little faith, would not know how to die like them. Instead of being saved by God, he preferred to save himself.

* * * * *

The second Paradise was that of the birds. It lay in a fresh grove, and their songs flooded the leaves of the alders and made them tremble. And from the alders the songs flowed onward into the river which became so imbued with music that it played on the rushes.

At a distance a hill stretched out; it was all covered with springtime and shade. Its sides were of incomparable softness. It was fragrant with solitude. The odor of nocturnal lilacs mingled with that which came from the heart of dark roses whence the hot white sun quenches its thirst.

Now, suddenly, at intervals, the song of the nightingale was heard expanding; it was as if stars of crystal had fallen upon the waves and broken there. There was no other sound but the song of the nightingale. Over the whole expanse of the silent hill nothing was heard but the song of the nightingale. Night was merely the sobbing of the nightingale.

Then in the groves dawn appeared, all rose-red because it was naked amid the choirs of birds who still sang from a full throat for their wings were heavy with love and morning dew. The quails in the grain were not yet calling. The tom-tits with their black heads made a noise in the thicket of fig-trees like the sound of pebbles moved by water. A wood-pecker rent the azure with its cry, and then flew toward the old, white-flowered apple-trees. It had almost the appearance of a handful of grass torn from the golden meadows with a clover-flower as its head.

The three hawks and the owl entered into these places abounding in flowers, and not a single redbreast and not a single gold-finch and not a single linnet was frightened by them. The birds of prey sat on their perches with an arrogant and sad air, and kept their eyes fixed on the sun; now and then they beat their steely wings against their mottled, keel-like breasts.

The owl sought out the shadows of the hill, so that hidden in some solitary cavern and happy in its darkness and wisdom, it might listen to the plaint of the nightingale.

But the most wonderful shelter of all was that chosen by the doves. They sat among the olive-trees, that were stirred by the evening breeze. In this garden young girls dwelled, who were permitted to enter here because of their animal-like grace. They included all the young girls who sighed and were like to honey-suckle; all the young girls who languish with all the doves that weep. And all the doves were included here, those from Venice, whose wings were like cooling fans to the boredom of the wives of the doges, as well as those of Iberia whose lips had the orange and tobacco-yellow color of fisherwomen and their provocative allurement. Here were all the doves of dreams, and all the dreaming doves: the dove that drew Beatrice heavenward and to which Dante gave a grain of corn; and the one which the disenchanted Quitteria heard in the night. Here was the dove which sobbed on Virginia's shoulder, when during the night she sought in vain to calm the fires of her love in the spring underneath a cocoanut-palm. And here too was the dove to which the heavy-hearted maiden at the waning of summer, in the orchard among the ripening peaches, confides passionate messages that it may bear them along in its flight into the unknown.

And there were the doves of old parsonages shrouded in roses, and those which Jocelyn with his incense-fragrant hand fed as he dreamed of Laurence. And there was the dove which is given to the dying little girl, and that which in certain regions is placed upon the burning brow of the sick, and the blinded dove whose voice is so filled with pain that it lures the flight of its passing sisters toward the huntsman's ambush, and the dove, the gentlest of all, who brings comfort to the forgotten old poet in his garret.

* * * * *

The third paradise was that of the sheep.

It lay in the heart of an emerald valley watered by streams, and beneath their sun-bathed crystal the grass was of a marvelous green. And nearby was a lake, iridescent like mother-of-pearl and the feathers of a peacock; it was azure and glistened like mica, and seemed to be the breast of humming-birds and the wing of butterflies. Here after they had licked the pure white salt from the golden-grained granite, the sheep dreamed their long dream, and their tufts of thick wool overlapped like the leaves of great branches covered with snow.

This landscape was so pure and of such dreamlike clarity that it had whitened the eye-lashes of the lambs, and had entered into their eyes of gold. And the atmosphere was so transparent that it seemed one could see in the depth of the water clearly revealed the outlines of the yellow-striped summits of limestone. Flowers of frost, of sky, and of blood were woven into the carpets of the forests of beech and fir. After having passed over them the breeze went forth again even more softly, more fragrant, more ice-like in its purity.

Like a blue flood the marvelous cone-like trees, interwoven with silvery lichens, stretched upward. Waterfalls as if suspended from the rocky crags, scattered in a smoke-like spray. And suddenly the heavenly flocks sent forth their bleating toward God, and the ecstatic bells wept for the shadow of the ferns. And the dark water of the grottoes broke in the light.

Lying amid the wild laurel the lamb of the Gospel became visible again. Its paw rested under its nose, and was still bleeding. The roads over which it had passed had been hard, but soon it would be fully restored by the slightly acid sweetness of the myrtles. Even now it was quivering as it listened to its scattered companions.

On entering this Paradise to dwell therein the sheep of Francis saw the lamb of Jean de la Fontaine amid the forget-me-nots which were of the mirror-like color of the waves. It no longer disputed with the wolf of the fable. It drank, and the water did not become turbid thereat. The untamed spring over which the two hundred year old ivy seemed to have thrown a shadow of bitterness, streamed on amid the grass with its broken waves in which were mirrored the snowy tremblings of the lamb.

And high on the slopes of the happy valleys they saw the sheep of those heroes that Cervantes tells about, all of whom were sick at heart for the love of one and the same girl and left their city to lead the life of shepherds in a far-away country. These sheep had the gentlest of voices, like hearts that secretly love their own sufferings. They drank from the wild thyme the always new, burning tears which their bucolic poets had let fall like dew from the cups of their eyes.

At the horizon of this Paradise there rose a confused murmur like that of the Ocean. It consisted of the broken sobbing of flutes or clarinets, of cries reechoed from the abysses, of the baying of restless dogs, and of the fall of a moss-covered stone into the void. It was the tumult of the waterfalls high above the noise of the torrents. It was like the voice of a people on the march toward the promised land, toward the grapes without name, toward the fiery spikes of grain; and mingled with this sound was the braying of pregnant she-asses, that were laden with heavy containers of milk and the mantles of the herdsmen and salt and cheeses which were brittle like chalk.

* * * * *

The fourth Paradise in its almost indescribable barrenness was that of the wolves.

At the summit of a treeless mountain, in the desolation of the wind, beneath a penetrating fog, they felt the voluptuous joy of martyrdom. They sustained themselves with their hunger. They experienced a bitter joy in feeling that they were abandoned, that never for more than an instant—and then only under the greatest suffering—had they been able to renounce their lust for blood. They were the disinherited, possessed of the dream that could never be realized. For a long time they had not been able to approach the heavenly lambs whose white eyelashes winked in the green light. And as none of these animals ever died, they could no longer lie in wait for the body which the shepherd threw to the eternal laughter of the torrent.

And the wolves were resigned. Their fur, bald as the rock, was pitiable. A sort of miserable grandeur reigned in this strange abode. One felt that this destitution was so tragic and so inexorable that one would have tenderly kissed the forehead of these poor flesh-eating beasts even had one surprised them in slaying the lambs. The beauty of this Paradise in which the friend of Francis now found his home was that of desolation and hopeless despair.

And beyond this region the heaven of the beasts stretched on to infinity.