Certainly this pious old man, who had so long studied the lives of the Saints, and knew that one must be no less pitiful to animals than to human beings, would not repel me, and perhaps his comforting words would heal somewhat the sufferings which were too much for me.
As I advanced the woods seemed changed; the birds no longer sang, the flowers were pale and withered, and even the trees were brown and dying.
"It is because I myself am so sad," thought I at first; "that is the reason the forest seems so dreary; but by and by, when I shall have found the Hermit, and his words will have imparted to me a little courage, I shall hear the birds sing again, and see the flowers I used to gather for her!"
Alas! I was mistaken. Like myself the forest had really lost all its gayety; the birds would not sing, nor the flowers bloom any more. I searched in every direction, but could not find the Hermit; at last I discovered, buried in the grass, a few half-decayed planks which alone remained to mark the spot where the hut had once stood. I saw that it had been abandoned, and left to be destroyed by the winds and the rain.
The good Hermit, with whom I had hoped to find a refuge, had left the forest; he had gone to seek another hermitage, or had taken up the life of a wandering mendicant, such as the Sacred Books sometimes ordain for Brahmans; or perhaps he might even be dead, killed by some ferocious tiger.
And so it was, that with him, all the joy and gladness had departed from the beautiful forest, which his presence no longer sanctified.
[CHAPTER XXIII]
THE HERD
If anything could have added to my wretchedness it would have been this failure to find the kind Hermit.