“Mad,” said Emma, “he, too! Lerne has made him mad, like Macbeth.”
Then the kind-hearted girl sobbed with all her heart, and I felt anger rising in me.
“Now, remember,” said the servant, “above all things, do not go near that summerhouse, it is overlooked on all sides.”
The other shook her beautiful locks, dried her tears, and lying down on the grass in the attitude of a sphinx, with her head in her hands, and her body curved, she gazed, for a long time affectionately, on that young figure whom she had loved so much.
The brute beast seemed to take more interest in this pose than in her former gestures.
A scene like this went beyond the bounds of the grotesque and horrible. That woman in love with my form—the form in which I no longer lived! That woman whom I adored, in love with a beast! How to accept such a thing with equanimity?
My anger exploded. This was the first time that I experienced the domination of my ardent bodily constitution. Mad with rage, blowing and snorting and foaming, I dashed over the meadow in all directions, and tore at the ground with my horns and hoofs, in the wild desire to kill somebody no matter whom.
From that time on, hatred poisoned my daydreams—ferocious hatred against this supernatural brute—this ridiculous Minotaur who turned all the forest of Brocéliande with its forest labyrinth into a comical Crete.
I cursed that body which had been stolen from me. I was jealous of it, and often when Jupiter—I and I—Jupiter looked at one another, both victims of our cast-off bodies, fury seized me once more. I charged about wildly, bellowing like a bull in the ring, with my tail in the air—my nostrils smoking—my head down, ready for murder, and desiring it as one longs for love in the springtime.
The cows warded me off as best they could. All the beasts feared the mad bull. One day, Lerne, passing that way, took to his heels.