The first day we let the sheep and cows out, the pine trees were still heavy with snow. The hill was all white too. It seemed to have come closer to the farm. All this white dazzled me. I could not find things in their places, and every moment I was afraid that I should not see the blue smoke curling up over the farm roofs any longer. The sheep could not find anything to eat, and ran about searching. I did not let them scatter too much. They looked like moving snow, and I was obliged to watch them closely so as not to lose sight of them. I managed to get them together in a meadow which skirted a big wood. The whole forest was busy getting rid of the snow which weighed it down. The big branches threw the snow off at one shake, while the others which were not so strong, stooped and bent themselves to make it slip down. I had never been into this forest. I only knew that it was a very big one, and that Martine sometimes took her sheep there. The pine trees were very tall, and the ferns grew very high.
I had been watching a big clump of ferns for a long time. I thought I had seen it move, and I heard a sound come out of it as though a bit of stick had broken under a footstep. I felt frightened. I thought there was somebody there. Then I heard the same sound again much nearer, but without seeing anything move. I tried to reassure myself by saying to myself that it was a hare, or some other little animal which was looking for food; but in spite of all I could try to think, I felt there was somebody there. I felt so nervous that I made up my mind to go nearer the farm. I had taken two steps towards my sheep when they huddled together and moved away from the wood. I was looking about to see what had frightened them, when quite close to me, in the very middle of the flock, I saw a yellow dog carrying off one of the sheep in his mouth. My first idea was that Castille had gone mad; but at the same moment Castille tumbled up against my dress and howled plaintively. Then I guessed that it was a wolf. It was carrying off a sheep which it held by the middle of its body. It climbed up a hillock without any difficulty, and as it jumped the broad ditch which separated the field from the forest its hind legs made me think of wings. At that moment I should not have thought it at all extraordinary if it had flown away over the trees. I stood there for a few moments, without knowing whether I was frightened. Then I felt that I could not take my eyes away from the ditch. My eyelids had become so stiff that I thought I should never be able to close them again. I wanted to call out, so that they should hear me at the farm, but I could not get my voice out of my throat. I wanted to run, but my legs were trembling so that I was obliged to sit down on the wet grass. Castille went on howling as though she were in pain, and the sheep remained huddled together.
When I got them back to the farm at last, I ran to look for Master Silvain. As soon as he saw me he guessed what had happened. He called his brother and took down their two guns, and I tried to show him which way the wolf had gone. They both came back at nightfall without having found him. We talked of nothing else all the evening. Eugène wanted to know what the wolf looked like; and old Bibiche got angry when I said that he had a long yellow coat like Castille, but that he was much handsomer than she was.
A few days afterwards it was Martine's turn. She had just taken her sheep out, and she had hardly reached the end of the avenue of chestnut trees when we heard her shouting. Everybody rushed out of the house. I got to Martine first. She was stooping down and pulling as hard as she could at a sheep which a wolf had just killed, and was trying to carry off. The wolf had the sheep by the throat, and was pulling as hard as Martine was. Martine's dog bit the wolf's legs, but he didn't seem to feel it, and when Master Silvain fired full at him he rolled over with a piece of the sheep's throat between his teeth. Martine's eyes were staring and her mouth had become quite white. Her cap had slipped off her head, and the parting which divided her hair into two made me think of a broad path on which one could walk without any danger. The usual strong expression of her face had changed into a sad little grimace, and her hands kept opening and closing, the two of them keeping time. She had been leaning against the chestnut tree, and she went up to Eugène, who was looking at the wolf. She stood by him for a moment looking at the dead wolf too, and said aloud: "Poor brute! How hungry he must have been!" The farmer put the wolf and the sheep on the same wheelbarrow, and wheeled them back to the farm. The dogs followed, sniffing at the barrow, and looking frightened.
For several days the farmer and his brother went out shooting in the neighbourhood. Whenever Eugène came anywhere near me he would stop and say a kind word. He told me that the noise they made with their guns drove the wolves away, and that one very rarely saw any in that part of the country. But although he said that there was little or no danger I didn't dare go back to the big forest. I preferred to go up on to the hill which was covered only with broom and ferns.
It the beginning of the spring the farmer's wife taught me how to milk the cows and look after the pigs. She said she wanted to make a good farmer of me. I could not help thinking of the Mother Superior and the disdainful tone in which she had said to me, "You will milk the cows and look after the pigs." When she said that, she said it as though she were giving me a punishment, and here I was delighted at having them to look after. I used to lean my forehead against a cow's flank to get a better purchase, and I very soon filled my pail. At the top of the milk a foam used to form which caught all kinds of changing colours, and when the sun passed over it it became so marvellously beautiful that I was never tired of looking at it.
Looking after the pigs never disgusted me. Their food was boiled potatoes and curdled milk. I used to dip my hands into the bucket to mix it all up, and I loved making them wait for their food a few minutes. Their eager cries and the way they wriggled their snouts about always amused me.