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Updated: June 18, 2025
Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; crouched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk of the forest. On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades.
Besides, on the grass-blades around are drops and gouts of blood, grown black during the night, looking as if it had rained ink; while little pools of the same are here and there seen, dull crimson and coagulated. From these sanguinary symbols the vultures are well aware that the recumbent forms are neither asleep nor reposing.
The annual resurrection had begun; the pulse of Nature quickened, rose, throbbed under the vernal summons; pale, tender grass-blades peeped above the mould, houstonias lifted their blue disks to the March sun, and while the world of birds commenced their preludes where silky young leaves shyly fluttered, earth and sky were wrapped in that silvery haze with which coy Springtime half veils her radiant face.
In the road crawled stout bronze-green beetles, in blind and clumsy haste, pushing through grass-blades, tumbling over stones, waving feeble legs as they lay helpless on their backs, with the air of an elderly clergyman knocked down by an omnibus and, on recovering their equilibrium, struggling breathlessly on. The birds gobbled fiercely in all directions, or sang loud and sweet upon the hedges.
He had a diary, in which nought was written, except the date: and pinned underneath, in place of writing, was the dry blade of grass. The history of a life contained in thousands of grass-blades, each blade representing a day. Could there be a sadder book? The only things that interested him, were fruit trees and bees. Animals and plants do not deceive him who loves them.
Two white butterflies fluttering round each other rise over the limes, once more up over the house, and soar on till their white shows no longer against the illumined air. A grasshopper calls on the sward by the strawberries, and immediately fillips himself over seven leagues of grass-blades.
In the distance they stopped, and soon were the centre of a group of children whom they taught to blow on the grass-blades, with many a half-frightened glance toward Menard and the maid. "There," he said, at length, "you may see the advantage of a reputation." She looked at him, and, moved by the pathos underlying the words, could not, for the moment, reply.
In the summer the hayfield knew him, and in the autumn the harvest-field, where busily he gathered what the earth gave, and for himself strength, a sense of wide life and large relations. The very mould, not to say the grass-blades and the daisies, was dear to him.
The reason of this is that the muslin checks the heat-waves as they rise from the grass, and so the grass-blades are not chilled enough to draw together the water-drops on their surface.
To describe the spot is to call it a vast, low, naturally formed hall, the plumy ceiling of which was supported by slender pillars of living wood, the floor being covered with a soft dun carpet of dead spikelets and mildewed cones, with a tuft of grass-blades here and there.
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