“To tell the truth, I wasn’t any too brave. I kept thinking about the castle on fire. My father had often told me, when I was a little tree, that in war men burned the woods in order to drive out the enemy. If the war came near me and the woods were burned, poor me! You can imagine how anxiously I waited. I listened all night. When the wind blew I held my branches still so they wouldn’t make a noise. At midnight a cuckoo came. As he was a good friend I begged him to keep quiet.
“‘I can’t,’ he said; ‘it is my duty to call “Cuckoo, cuckoo” a thousand times every night. That is my work. But if it will give you any pleasure I will go to another part of the mountain,’ and so he did. The night passed peacefully. The dawn came, and then....”
“I beg of you, don’t stop. What happened at dawn?”
“At dawn I heard some noises here and there. I raised my leaves to listen better and heard the sound of animals in flight.
“I waited to see some of them and to ask questions, and pretty soon out of a hole came a family of boars; father, mother and two sons. I didn’t love wild boars; they are worthless and badly educated beasts that often came around to clean their tusks on my trunk, stripping off all my bark, but this time I forgot all about my hatred and tried to welcome them by holding out a branch. The father boar tore off some leaves and went on without even saying thank you, and all the family followed grunting.
“By good luck, soon after, a roebuck came along. ‘What is happening?’ I whispered to him. He turned panting, and held up one ear, all anxiety, and replied:
“‘They are coming here.’
“‘Who?’
“‘Armed men,’ he said and scampered away.
“‘And I must stay here,’ I thought.”