Grief went from me less quickly. Those who have entertained others with the recital of tricks of this sort--Homer, Ovid, Apuleius, and Perrault, did not know what tragedies their fictions would become, once they became realities. What a drama there is really in Lucian’s “Ass”! What a martyrdom for me this week of dieting and enforced inaction! Dead to humanity, I awaited with terror the tortures of vivisection, or the premature old age which would be the end of everything, before five years were out. In spite of my despair, I got well. Lerne having ascertained this, I was turned out into the paddock. Europa, Athor, and Io gamboled in front of me. Many long days were to pass before I could make them accustomed to me. Long days, and all a man’s cunning employed in the task. A good bout of kicking finally subjugated them. This incident would be a fit theme for deep philosophizing, and I should succumb to the temptation to hold forth, were it not that such dissertations are an awkward interruption of the course of a story. For the time being, annoyed at the welcome with which the three horned ladies received me, and only desiring their favors with the ardor of a valetudinarian, I began peacefully to browse on the grass of the meadow. Here begins the most interesting period--that of my observations on my new condition. They occupied me so completely, that I began to consider the bull’s body as a moveable dwelling--an exile’s home, no doubt, but an unexplored, bewildering place, full of surprises, from which chance would perhaps deliver me--for as soon as a place is merely not unpleasing, one immediately feels the risk of being driven from it. As long as this accommodation of my man’s mind to the organs of the beast lasted, I was really fairly happy. The fact was that a new world was just being revealed to me, together with the taste of the simple herbs on which I was feeding. Just as my eyes, my ears and my muzzle sent to my brain visions, sounds, and smells hitherto unimagined, my tongue with its strange _papillæ_ was bound to afford me very original sensations of taste. Simple herbs gave a savor of which human palates have no idea. The _cuisine_ of the epicure cannot possibly give them as much pleasure with twelve courses, as a bull gets in a small meadow. I could not refrain from comparing the taste of my fodder with that of my former food. There is more difference between lucern and clover than between a fried sole and a rib of venison with _sauce chasseud_. Plants have all sorts of tastes for the mouth of a graminivorous animal. The buttercup is rather insipid, the thistle rather peppery, but nothing equals fragrant and many-flavored hay. Pastures are a continually spread feast to which hunger impels their denizens to devote themselves. The water of the trough changed in taste, according to the time and the weather. At one time acidulous--at another time salt or sweet. Light in the morning, and syrupy in the evening.