“I’ll play her a piece on the cornet,” said Mattia, who found it difficult to keep still. “There was a cow at Gassot’s Circus and she liked music.”
He commenced to play a lively march.
At the first note the cow lifted up her head; then suddenly, before I could throw myself at her horns to catch hold of the rope, she had gone off at a gallop. We raced after her as fast as we could, calling to her to stop. I shouted to Capi to stop her. Now one cannot be endowed with every talent. A cattle driver’s dog would have jumped at her nose, but Capi was a genius, so he jumped at her legs. Naturally, this made her run faster. She raced back to the last village we had passed through. As the road was straight, we could see her in the distance, and we saw several people blocking her way and trying to catch hold of her. We slackened our speed, for we knew now that we should not lose her. All we should have to do would be to claim her from the good people who had stopped her going farther. There was quite a crowd gathered round her when we arrived on the scene, and instead of giving her up to us at once, as we expected they would, they asked us how we got the animal and where we got her. They insisted that we had stolen her and that she was running back to her owner. They declared that we ought to go to prison until the truth could be discovered. At the very mention of the word “prison” I turned pale and began to stammer. I was breathless from my race and could not utter a word. At this moment a policeman arrived, and, in a few words, the whole affair was explained to him. As it did not seem at all clear, he decided to take possession of the cow and have us locked up until we could prove that it belonged to us. The whole village seemed to be in the procession which ran behind us up to the town hall, which was also the station house. The mob pushed us and sneered at us and called us the most horrible names, and I do believe that if the officer had not defended us they would have lynched us as though we were criminals of the deepest dye. The man who had charge of the town hall, and who was also jailer and sheriff, did not want to admit us. I thought what a kind man! However, the policeman insisted that we be locked up, and the jailer finally turned the big key in a double-locked door and pushed us into the prison. Then I saw why he had made some difficulty about receiving us. He had put his provision of onions to dry in this prison and they were strewn out on every bench. He heaped them all together in a corner. We were searched, our money, matches and knives taken from us. Then we were locked up for the night.
“I wish you’d give me a good slap,” said Mattia miserably, when we were alone; “box my ears or do something to me.”
“I was as big a fool as you to let you play the cornet to a cow,” I replied.
“Oh, I feel so bad about it,” he said brokenly; “our poor cow, the Prince’s cow!” He began to cry.
Then I tried to console him by telling him that our situation was not very serious. We would prove that we bought the cow; we would send to Ussel for the veterinarian… he would be a witness.
“But if they say we stole the money to buy it,” he said, “we can’t prove that we earned it, and when one is unfortunate they always think you’re guilty.” That was true.
“And who’ll feed her?” went on Mattia dismally.
Oh, dear, I did hope that they would feed our poor cow.