Suddenly he thought that he heard a beating of hoofs behind him, the echo of his own gallop; he turned and saw--he saw in very truth!--pursuing him at full speed, the naked gipsy, sitting firmly astride her saddle, man-fashion, upon a shadowy horse whose feet did not touch the ground. She flew through the air, laughing in mockery as she cried to him: "Stop, coward!" He said to himself that it was not real, but he did not say to himself that it was a vision; he thought: "It is witchcraft!" and fear seized upon him, fear as powerful as his desire, and he fled from the image of her he sought. He turned to look no more; he fled. He heard the double gallop still: his own and the other's. He rode through the transparent mist that hovered over the damp, salt sand; and as he cut through those crawling clouds it seemed to him as if he were riding through the sky, above the higher clouds. In very truth, his brain was wandering, for love will be obeyed, and his youthful passion was like insanity. Suddenly Blanchet's four legs, as he flew over the ground, became motionless and rigid as stakes, and his shoeless feet began to slide over an absolutely smooth surface of clay, hard as iron and as slippery as if it had been soaped. Swiftly the horse slid along, digging furrows with his hoofs upon the polished surface, and when he lost his acquired momentum, he stopped, tried to resume his former pace, raised one foot and fell heavily to the ground, exhausted, his mouth and nostrils breathing despair. In an instant, Renaud, leaning on his spear, which he had not let go, stood at his horse's head, struggling to lift him up, and encouraging him with his voice. Blanchet, supported by the rein in his master's hand, regained his feet after two fruitless slides. Renaud looked about: there was nothing to be seen save darkness, the desert, the stars,--tatters of pallid mist that strayed hither and thither, as if clinging to a bush, a tamarisk, a clump of rushes,--and assumed, from time to time, the shape of fantastic animals. Renaud mounted Blanchet once more, but he was moved to pity for him. And the horse, sometimes letting himself slide upon his shoeless feet, his four legs perfectly stiff, sometimes putting one foot before the other, testing the ground, which was firm and hard beneath his weight, but soft beneath his sharp, scaly hoof, carried him at last away from the clayey tract. Pity and remorse at once were awakened in Renaud's heart by Livette's horse. What right had he, the drover, to ruin the favorite steed of his darling fiancée in the service of his passion for a witch? So Renaud dismounted, removed Blanchet's saddle and bridle, and said to him: "Go! do what you will." Then he cut a bundle of reeds with which he made himself a bed, and lay upon his back, with his saddle under his head and a handkerchief over his face, waiting for dawn.