“Look here, youngster, since you are a bit of a brick we don’t want to harm you, but all the same, we can’t have you spying which way we go, so we are going to pop you into that barrel there. When the day comes you can call out and the first passer-by can release you—if he likes!”
“All right,” I said submissively. “Put me into the barrel.” To tell the truth I was very glad to get off so cheaply.
In the corner of the hovel stood a battered cask, used, doubtless, at the time of the vintage for fermenting the grape.
They caught hold of me by the seat of my trousers, and pop! into the cask I went. So there I found myself, in the middle of the night, in a cask, on the floor of a cottage in ruins.
I crouched down, poor little wretch, rolling myself up like a ball, and while waiting for the dawn I said my prayers in low tones to scare the evil spirits.
But—imagine my dismay when suddenly I heard, in the dark, something prowling and snorting, round my cask! I held my breath as though I were dead, and committed myself to God and the sainted Virgin. Still I heard it, that dread something going round and round me, sniffing and pushing—what the devil was it? My heart thumped and knocked like a hammer.
But to finish my tale: at last the day commenced to dawn, and the pattering that caused me such fear seemed to me to be growing a little more distant. Very cautiously I peeped out by means of the bunghole, and there, not far off, I beheld—a wolf, my good friends—nothing short of a wolf the size of a donkey! An enormous wolf with eyes that glared like two lamps.
Attracted by the odour of the cooked lamb he had come there, and finding nothing but bones, the close proximity of a Christian child’s tender flesh filled him with hungry longing. But the curious thing was that, far from feeling fear at the sight of this beast, I experienced a great relief. The fact was, I had so dreaded some nocturnal apparition that the sight of even such a wolf gave me courage.
“All very fine,” I thought, “but I’ve not done with him yet. If that beast finds out that the cask is open at the top, he will jump in also and crunch me up with one bite of those teeth. I must think of a plan to outwit him!”
Some movement I made caught the sharp ear of the wolf, and with one bound he was back at the cask, prowling round and lashing the sides with his long tail. Promptly I passed my small hand through the bunghole, seized hold of that tail, and pulling it inside, grasped it tightly with both hands. The wolf, as though he had five hundred devils after him, started off, dragging the cask over rocks and stones, through fields and vineyards. We must have rolled together over all the ups and downs of Eyragues, of Lagoy, and of Bourbourel.