"He is a living proof," cried Paragot, "of the solidity rerum agrestium. Look at him! Shew me a horse of his age in Paris. The Paris horses, like Youth in the poem, grow pale and spectre thin and die of premature decay. Here, mon petit," said he giving a sou to a blue bloused urchin who was restraining the impetuous Bucéphale from a wild gallop over the Eure et Loire, "when you have spent that come to La Haye and I will give you another."
He threw my bag into the cart, and we took our places on the plank that served as a seat.
"En route, Bucéphale!" cried Paragot, gathering up the reins. "Observe the kindly manners of the country. If I had addressed him like your Paris cabman with a 'Hue Cocotte!' it would have wounded his susceptibilities."
Bucéphale started off jog-trot down the straight white road edged with poplars, while Paragot talked, and the sun blazed down upon us from a cobalt sky. All around the fertile plain laughed in the sunshine—a giant, contented laugh, like that of its broad-faced, broad-hipped daughters who greeted Paragot as we raced by at the rate of five miles an hour. Did I ever meet a Paris horse that went this speed? asked Paragot, and I answered him truthfully, "Never."
We stopped in a white-walled, red-roofed village, beside a tiny shop gloriously adorned with a gilt bull's head. The butcher's wife came out. "Bonjour, Monsieur Paragot."
"Bonjour, Madame Jolivet, have you a nice fatted calf for this young Prodigal from Paris? If you haven't, we can do with four kilos of good beef."
And the result of ten minutes talk was a great lump of raw meat, badly wrapped in newspaper, which Paragot, careless of my Paris clothes, thrust on my knees, while he continued to drive Bucéphale. I dropped the beef into the back of the cart. Paragot shook his head.
"To-morrow, my son, you shall be clothed in humility and shall clean out the cow pen."
"I should prefer to accept your original invitation, Master," said I, "and help with the corn."
For Paragot, besides Bucéphale and cows and ducks and pigs and fowls and a meadow or two, possessed a patch of cornfield of which he was passionately proud. He had sown it himself that spring and now was harvest. He pointed to it with his whip as soon as we came in sight of the farm.