“It’s just like him,” observes an old woman, “to rush to certain death. Ah! but he is brave.”
By this time the people, too, are in a panic. Husbands and wives and parents and children have become separated, and terrible havoc has been made by the cattle along the roads, and valuable beasts are lost or killed. The adjacent country looks not unlike a battle-field. Here and there the wounded beasts lie bleeding upon the ground. The market-place shows traces of an unusual struggle and of hard usage; the cottages are battered, windows knocked out and doors unhinged.
This stampede surpasses anything in the way of a calamity ever known in the annals of St. Benoit.
At length, a man armed with a cudgel strides forth as if to encounter the foe. Each advancing bull is driven into the ring by the man Andoche calls “the Bear.” He is a singular-looking figure as he stands there, with his unkempt beard and hair fluttering in the breeze.
Rushing to the spot where Bruno has fallen, L’Ours (“the Bear”) takes a guarded attitude and then strikes out in every direction, beating down the cattle right and left.
“He will be killed!” cries some one. “Why should he go to Bruno’s aid now? The fellow must certainly be dead.”
“Have you not noticed that L’Ours always happens around when Mother Mathurine’s son is in danger?”
“Yes—how strange it is!”
“And why is it?” asks Rosalie, who is always prying into others’ affairs, being the most inquisitive of women.
“Why? Why? Go and ask him. Perhaps he will tell you.”