“Oh mercy! pity! dear Virgin, dear Saint Joseph,” I cried out. “Where is this wolf taking me? And if the cask breaks he will gobble me up in a moment.”
Then all of a sudden, crash went the cask—the tail escaped from my hands, and—far off, quite in the distance, I saw my wolf escaping at a gallop. On looking round, what was my astonishment to find myself close to the New Bridge, on the road that leads to Maillane from Saint-Rémy, not more than a quarter of an hour from our farm. The barrel must have knocked up against the parapet of the bridge and come to pieces in that way.
It is hardly necessary to say that after such adventures the thought of the rod in my father’s hand no longer possessed any terrors for me, and running as though the wolf were after me I soon found myself at home.
At the back of the farm-house I saw in the field my father ploughing a long furrow. He leant against the handle and called to me laughing: “Ha, ha, my fine fellow, run in quick to your mother—she has not slept a wink all night!”
And I ran in to my mother.
Omitting nothing, I related to my parents all my thrilling adventures, but when I came to the story of the robbers and the cask and the enormous wolf:
“Ah, little simpleton,” they cried, “why it was fright made you dream all that!”
It was useless my assuring them again and again that it was true as the Gospel; I could never get any one to believe me.
