The five wolves appeared, indeed, to be skipping in pure amazement, like the mountains of Judæa; but they howled in tribulation, like the gate of Palestina. They leapt and ran hither and thither; they bit at the air, at their flanks, at their feet; they raked their heads with their paws and rolled on the ground in knots. At last I read the riddle in a tiny moted cloud that whirled above them. In dashing against the rotten branch I had, it seemed, upset a hornets’ nest built in the old tooth of the tree, and the garrison had sallied forth to cover my retreat. Oh, but the braves! I raised a little pæan to them on the spot, but I took care not to shout it. Suddenly the beasts turned tail and went yelling back into the wood. I did not rise at once. I left the victors time to congratulate themselves and to settle down. And at last I was too diffident to pester them with my gratitude, and I waded sheer across the pool (that was nowhere more than three feet deep) and landed on its farther side. * * * * * * * One day I happened upon Carinne! That is the high note of this droning chant of retrospection. I was walking aimlessly, the hot thirst upon me once more, when I came out from amongst trees into a sort of forest amphitheatre of considerable extent, whose base, like the kick in a bottle, was a round hill, pretty high, and scattered sparsely with chestnut-trees. I climbed the slopes toilfully, and getting a view of things from near the summit, saw that to the north the circumference of green was broken by the gates of a hazy valley. It was as beautiful a place as I had ever chanced on; but its most gladdening corner to me was that whence a little brook looped out of the forest skirt, like a timid child coaxed from its mother’s apron, and pattering a few yards, fled back again to shelter. Now I would take it all in before I descended, postponing the cool ecstasy like an epicure. I mounted to the top, and, peering between the chestnut trunks down the farther slopes, uttered an exclamation of surprise. A herd of swine was peacefully feeding against the fringe of the wood, and, even as I looked, one of them, a mottled porkling, crashed through a little rug of branches spread upon the ground and vanished into Tartarus. Immediately his dismal screeches rebuked the skies, and, at the sound, a girl came running out of the wood, and, kneeling above the fatal breach, clasped her hands over her eyes and turned away her face--a very Niobe of pigs. Seeing her thus, I descended to her assistance; but, lost in her grief, it seemed, she did not hear me until I was close upon her. Then suddenly she glanced up startled,--and her eyes were the cold eyes of Carinne. CHAPTER VII. THE CHEVALIER DU GUET.