Still, when we had passed them I did not dare to look back for fear they should be coming after us. It always seemed to me that one of them would creep stealthily up behind and grip me. I seemed to feel, sometimes, as if one of the dogs was only a foot behind me, and just about to spring, and then, with a great fear on me, I would turn round suddenly to find, of course, no dog there.
The poor beasts had not wasted another thought on us: they returned to their flocks, after we passed, gently wagging their tails, and stopping now and again to philosophize, with their noses examining a mole-hill.
The turkeys were creatures that I detested, and nothing was more disagreeable to me than meeting them. I was very much afraid of them. I can scarcely give an idea of the effect produced upon me by their little black eyes, which always had an angry glare in them, their frightful wrinkled heads, their great spread-out tails, and drooping wings; there seemed to me to be something hideously unnatural always about the turkeys, and when they advanced towards me, with their ruffled feathers, they appeared to me like some monstrous stuffed beasts, that went on wheels, not living birds walking about. Marc did not seem to notice them, and I never told anyone the dread I had of those turkeys; but when they came near I shrank into a corner, and scarcely breathed until they had passed.
The pigs, too, troubled me not a little. I would willingly have walked a good distance out of my way to avoid passing through the copse where they were turned out. I distrusted their squinting little eyes, which appeared so full of deceit and malice; and I hated the familiarity with which they came up to smell us, simply because they, like us, belonged to the house. I remembered on these occasions all sorts of terrible tales of children having been devoured by pigs. But the coolness and confidence of Marc, in all times of apparent danger, in a little while reassured me.
Little by little—seeing that I was neither bitten, tossed, pecked, nor devoured—I became accustomed to all the objects which at first caused me so much terror. It is true I did not go in search of them, but I did not fly from them, as I began by doing.
XXX.
ULYSSES MAKES HIS APPEARANCE.
The day before that on which we were to return to Loches, Marc and I went on to one of the terraces which overlooked the road, to shoot our bows and arrows. All of a sudden Marc cried out, “Hollo! here’s Ulysses! what does he come for, I wonder?”
Ulysses was one of the gendarmes belonging to the brigade at Loches. I was leaning on the railing: Ulysses came up to us at a hard gallop.
“Hollo! Ulysses, how d’ye do?” cried Marc.