The way things shape themselves, however, it is Bashan who sometimes goes tumbling head over heels when he tries to meet and counter that damnable quick turn, and sometimes it is also the rabbit who does the somersault, though this is a mere trifle to the latter, something quite in order and inconsequential and certainly by no means identified with any feeling of abject misery. For Bashan, however, it means a severe concussion, which might some time or other lead to his breaking his neck. Often a rabbit-chase comes to an end in a few minutes, that is to say, when the rabbit succeeds after a few hot lengths of running, in ducking into the underbrush and hiding, or in throwing his pursuer off his trail by means of feints and quick double turns, so that the four-legged hunter, sorely puzzled and uncertain, jumps hither and thither, whilst I shout bloodthirsty advice to him and with frantic gesticulations of my cane try to point out to him the direction in which I saw the rabbit escape. Sometimes the hunt extends itself throughout the length and breadth of the landscape, so that Bashan’s voice, wildly yowling, sounds like a hunting-horn ringing through the region from afar, now nearer and now farther away, whilst I, awaiting his return, calmly go my ways. And, great Heavens! in what a condition he _does_ return! Foam drips from his jaws, his thighs are lax and hollow, his ribs flutter, his tongue hangs long and loose from his maw, inordinately gaping, something which causes his drunken and swimming eyes to appear distorted and slant, Mongolian, the while his breathing goes like a steam-engine. “Lie down, Bashan!” I command him, “take a rest, or you’ll have apoplexy of the lungs!” I halt so as to give him time to recover. In winter when there is a cold frost and I see him pumping the icy air with hoarse pantings into his overheated interior and then puffing it forth in the form of white steam, or else swallowing whole handfuls of snow in order to cool his thirst, I grow quite terrified. Nevertheless, whilst he lies there, gazing up at me with confused eye, now and again snapping up his dribblings, I cannot refrain from poking a bit of fun at him, because of the unalterable futility of his efforts. “Bashan! where’s that rabbit! Aren’t you going to fetch me that rabbit!” Then he begins to thump the ground with his tail, and interrupts for a moment whilst I am speaking the spasmodic pumping machinery of his sides. He snaps in embarrassment, for he does not know that my ridicule is intended merely to conceal from him and from myself an accretion of shame and guilty conscience, because I, on my part, was not man enough to “hold up” the rabbit—as is the duty of a real master. He is unaware of all this, and so it is easy for me to make fun and to put the matter as though _he_ were in some way to blame. . . .