Sometimes in a dream he saw himself like our father Adam in the midst of Paradise among all the beasts; he stretched out his arm and made them die; or else they passed before him two by two in order of their bigness, from the elephants and the lions to the ermines and the ducks, as on the day when they entered Noah’s Ark. In the shade of a cavern he darted unerring javelins upon them; others came; there was no end to them; and he woke up rolling his eyes savagely.
Princes of his acquaintance invited him to hunt. He always refused, thinking by this sort of penance to avert his misfortune; for it seemed to him that the fate of his parents depended on the murder of the animals. But he suffered from not seeing them, and his other desire became intolerable.
To divert him his wife sent for jugglers and dancing-girls.
She walked with him, in an open litter, in the country; at other times stretched on the side of a skiff they watched the fish straying in the water clear as the sky. Often she threw flowers in his face; sitting at his feet she drew music from a three-stringed mandoline; then, placing her clasped hands on his shoulder, she would ask in a timid voice, “Why, what ails you, my dear lord?”
He gave no reply, or burst into sobs; at last one day he confessed his horrible thought.
She opposed it with very sound arguments: his father and mother were probably dead; if ever he saw them again, by what chance, with what purpose, would he come to work this abomination? Therefore his fears were groundless, and he ought to take to hunting again.
Julian smiled as he heard her, but he did not decide to satisfy her desire.
One evening in the month of August, when they were in their room, she had just gone to bed, and he was kneeling for his prayers, when he heard the barking of a fox, then light footsteps under the window; and caught sight in the dusk of something that looked like animals. The temptation was too strong. He took his quiver down from the peg.
She seemed surprised.
“It is to obey you!” he said, “I shall be back by sunrise.”