She still went on, looking wistfully all around, and making the place echo with “Capriole! Capriole! where are you, my Capriole?” till, at length, she came to the foot of the steep hill. She climbed up its sides to get a better view. No kid was to be seen. She sat down and wept and wrung her hands. After a while she fancied she heard a bleating like the well-known voice of her Capriole. She started up, and looked toward the sound, which seemed a great way overhead. At length, she spied, just on the edge of a steep crag, her Capriole peeping over. She stretched out her hands to him, and began to call, but with a timid voice, lest in his impatience to return to her, he should leap down and break his neck. But there was no such danger. Capriole was inhaling the fresh breeze of the mountains, and enjoying with rapture the scenes for which nature designed him. His bleating was the expression of joy, and he bestowed not a thought on his kind mistress, nor paid the least attention to her call. Sylvia ascended as high as she could toward him, and called louder and louder, but all in vain. Capriole leaped from rock to rock, cropped the fine herbage in the clefts, and was quite lost in the pleasure of his new existence.
Poor Sylvia stayed till she was tired, and then returned disconsolate to the farm, to relate her misfortune. She got her brothers to accompany her back to the hill, and took with her a slice of white bread and some milk to tempt the little wanderer home. But he had mounted still higher, and had joined a herd of companions of the same species, with whom he was frisking and sporting. He had neither eyes nor ears for his old friends of the valley. All former habits were broken at once, and he had commenced free commoner of nature. Sylvia came back crying, as much from vexation as sorrow. “The little ungrateful thing,” said she; “so well as I loved him, and so kindly as I treated him, to desert me in this way at last!—But he was always a rover.”
“Take care, then, Sylvia,” said her mother, “how you set your heart upon rovers again!”
HOW TO MAKE THE BEST OF IT.
Robinet, a peasant of Lorraine, after a hard day’s work at the next market-town, was running home with a basket in his hand. “What a delicious supper shall I have!” said he to himself. “This piece of kid well stewed down, with my onions sliced, thickened with my meal, and seasoned with my salt and pepper, will make a dish for the bishop of the diocese. Then I have a good piece of barley-loaf at home to finish with. How I long to be at it!”
A noise in the hedge now attracted his notice, and he spied a squirrel nimbly running up a tree, and popping into a hole between the branches. “Ha!” thought he, “what a nice present a nest of young squirrels will be to my little master! I’ll try if I can get it.” Upon this, he set down his basket in the road, and began to climb the tree. He had half ascended, when casting a look at his basket, he saw a dog with his nose in it, ferreting out the piece of kid’s flesh. He made all possible speed down, but the dog was too quick for him, and ran off with the meat in his mouth. Robinet looked after him. “Well,” said he, “then I must be contented with soupe maigre—and no bad thing neither.”
He travelled on, and came to a little public-house by the roadside, where an acquaintance of his was sitting on a bench drinking. He invited Robinet to take a draught. Robinet seated himself by his friend, and set his basket on the bench close by him. A tame raven, which was kept at the house, came slyly behind him, and perching on the basket, stole away the bag in which the meal was tied up, and hopped off with it to his hole. Robinet did not perceive the theft till he had got on his way again. He returned to search for his bag, but could hear no tidings of it. “Well,” says he, “my soup will be the thinner; but I will boil a slice of bread with it, and that will do it some good at least.”
He went on again, and arrived at a little brook, over which was laid a narrow plank. A young woman coming up to pass at the same time, Robinet gallantly offered his hand. As soon as she was got to the middle, either through fear or sport, she shrieked out, and cried she was falling. Robinet hastening to support her with his other hand, let his basket drop into the stream. As soon as she was safe over, he jumped in and recovered it; but when he took it out he perceived that all the salt was melted, and the pepper washed away. Nothing was now left but the onions. “Well!” says Robinet, “then I must sup to-night upon roasted onions and barley-bread. Last night I had the bread alone. To-morrow morning it will not signify what I had.” So saying, he trudged on singing as before.
ORDER AND DISORDER.—A Fairy Tale.
Juliet was a clever, well-disposed girl, but apt to be heedless. She could learn her lessons very well, but commonly as much time was taken up in getting her things together as in doing what she was set about. If she was at work, there was generally the housewife to seek in one place, and the thread-papers in another. The scissors were left in her pocket upstairs, and the thimble was rolling about the floor. In writing, the copybook was generally missing, the ink dried up, and the pens, new and old, all tumbled about the cupboard. The slate and slate-pencil were never found together. In making her exercises, the English dictionary always came to hand instead of the French grammar; and when she was to read a chapter, she usually got hold of Robinson Crusoe, or the World Displayed, instead of the Testament.