Barbe (with her corpulent figure), whom I met, told me that he was walking about in the park. I did not meet him there, but at the edge of the pond I saw Karl and Wilhelm, who were looking at something in the water. Those two black-guards inspired me with aversion, because of their interchanged brains. Their presence was usually enough to drive me away, but that day, the sight which kept them on the water’s edge, drew me to them. This something they were looking at kept jumping out of the water with a shower of diamond drops; it was a carp. It leaped up, shaking its fins, which beat the air like wings. One would have said that it was trying to fly away. The poor creature really was trying to do so! I had before me that fish which Lerne had dowered with a blackbird’s soul. The captive bird--a prey in its scaly flesh to the old aspirations of its race, and weary of its watery home--was leaping towards an impossible heaven. Finally, with a more despairing effort, the creature fell on the shore, with its gills quivering. Then Wilhelm seized it, and the assistants departed with their booty. They apostrophized it, and amused themselves with it like old ill-conditioned guttersnipes. They were whistling, and imitating the blackbird’s song in mockery, and then, by way of a laugh, a great neighing came from their chests, and without knowing it, they reproduced the sound of a horse’s trumpet much better than they had that of the winged flute. I remained dreamily contemplating the pond, that liquid cage in which the enchanted carp had suffered the haunting desire to fly, and the regret for a nest. The liquid mirror, a moment disturbed by the fury of the fish’s leaps, would not have reassumed its leaden calm before the creature was dead. Its martyrdom was going to end in the stewpan. How would that of the other victims finish, the escaped beasts, and Macbeth? Oh, Macbeth! how to deliver him! On the water, now becalmed in deep repose, a last ripple was spreading its circles, and the depths of the firmament were reflected in its mirror again. The evening star was shining in the depths of the lake millions of leagues away, but at will, it was possible, on the contrary, to imagine it floating on the surface, and the leaves of the water-lilies, crescents and half-circles, seemed like reflections of the moon at its successive ages, which had remained there, slumbering in that chill water. Macbeth! I thought once more. Macbeth! What about _him_? At this moment there was the sound of a distant bell at the main door. Somebody at this hour of the day! Nobody ever came!... I retraced my steps to the _château_ at a rapid pace, asking myself for the first time what would happen to Nicolas if the Law descended on Fonval. Hiding behind the corner of the _château_, I ventured a glance. Lerne was standing at the door reading a telegram that moment received, and I came out from my hiding-place.