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And thither, unto Malepartus safe and strong, trots Reinecke, where he hopes to be snug among the labyrinthine windings, and innumerable starting-holes, as the old apologue has it, of his ballium, covert-way, and donjon keep.
Enough that each can tell one a good story, welcome one cheerfully, and give one out here, in the wild forest, the wholesome feeling of being at home among friends. There is music, again, if you will listen, in the soft tread of these hundred horse-hoofs upon the spongy vegetable soil. The hounds feather a moment round Malepartus, puzzled by the windings of Reinecke's footsteps.
Suddenly he halts at the great gate of Malepartus; examines it with his nose; goes on to a postern; examines that also, and then another, and another; while I perceive afar, projecting from every cave's mouth, the red and green end of a new fir-faggot. Ah, Reinecke! fallen is thy conceit, and fallen thy tail therewith.
Beneath yon firs, some hundred yards away, standeth, or rather lieth, for it is on dead flat ground, the famous castle of Malepartus, which beheld the base murder of Lampe the hare, and many a seely soul beside. I know it well; a patch of sand-heaps, mingled with great holes, amid the twining fir-roots; ancient home of the last of the wild beasts.
Lampe had told tales of him; he had complained that Reineke, under pretence of teaching him his Catechism, had seized him and tried to murder him; and though he provoked his fate by thrusting himself, after such a warning, into the jaws of Malepartus, Reineke betrays an uneasiness about it in confession; and, unlike himself, feels it necessary to make some sort of an excuse.
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