VIII.
Myriads of lizards nestle in the chinks of slate and in the walls of rounded pebbles. On the approach of a passer-by, they run like a streak across the road. If you stand quiet for a moment, you see their little restless, sly heads peep out between two stones; the rest of the body shows itself, the tail wriggles, and, with an abrupt movement, they climb zigzag upon the gravelly ledges. There they have as much sun as they please, sun to roast alive in; at noon, the rock burns the hand. This powerful sun heats their cold blood, and gives spring and action to their limbs. They are capricious, passionate, violent, and fight like men. Sometimes you may see two of them rolling the whole length of a rock, one over the other, in the dust, get up again dimmed and dirty, and run briskly away, like cowardly and insubordinate schoolboys taken in a misdeed. Some of them lose their tails in these adventures, so that they look as if they wore a coat that is too short for them; they hide, ashamed of being so ill dressed. Others in their gray justi-coats have slight, graceful motions, an air at once so coquettish and timid that it takes away all desire to harm them. When they are asleep on a slab of stone, you can see their whitish throat and their small, intelligent mouth; but they scarcely, ever sleep, they are always on the lookout; they scamper off at the least sound, and, when nothing troubles them, they trot, frolic, climb up and down, make a hundred turns for pleasure. They love company, and live near or with one another. No animal is prettier or has more innocent ways; with the charming white and yellow sedum, it enlivens the long walls of stone, and both live on dryness, as other things on moisture.
The sun, the light, the vegetation, animals, man, are so many books wherein Nature has, in different characters, written the same thought. If the hogs have a clean and rosy skin, it is because the boiling granite and the sea swarming with fish have during millions of years accumulated and uplifted ten thousand feet of rock.
