Each day, with greater affection, I followed her on her walks, as long as I could. Separated from her by barbed wire, I attempted mimicry and words, but Emma was afraid of the bull--its little leaps, and its lowing. She understood nothing, any more than I had understood about Donovan from the capers of the dog. Sometimes, when in my attempts to make too human a gesture I stumbled in my quadrupedal way, the girl was amused at it, and I found myself stumbling intentionally, in order to see her smile. Thus love by degrees resumed its torturing sway. It could not return unaccompanied by jealousy, and the latter also hastened the progress of my languor. It was jealousy, but attended with an extraordinary sentiment! There stood between the paddock and the pond that hexagonal summerhouse which had been the Giant Briareus. Lerne inflicted on me the annoyance of lodging my former body in it. I saw his assistants bring in some elementary furniture, and then the creature itself--and ever since that day, there he was, with his forehead glued to the windows, and stupidly watching me. His hair was growing again. His beard was sprouting. Now heavy and chubby, his person was bursting through his clothes. His eye--that almond eye, of which I had been so proud--was now becoming a round ox’s eye. The man with the bull’s brain was assuming the expression which I had remarked in Donovan, but more bestial still, and less good-natured. My poor body had reserved the habit of certain familiar gestures. An incorrigible trick made it shrug its shoulders now and then, so that the wretched creature seemed to be laughing at me from the windows of the summerhouse. He often would shout out in the dusk of evening. My beautiful baritone voice was distorted into discordant clamors--into the yells of a gorilla. Then, in the laboratory, Macbeth would howl, with his poor canine throat, and the irresistible need of making my own lamentations heard, filled the valley of Fonval with the sounds of a monstrous trio. * * * * * Emma perceived that the summerhouse was inhabited. That day she and Barbe were walking round the paddock. I had, as usual, accompanied them to a certain little wood which was crossed by the road, and I awaited them at the entrance of that avenue where the doves were cooing. They came out of it and then they suddenly paused. Emma was transfigured. She had taken on that animated expression which I knew of old--quivering nostrils--eyes half shut, and her bosom heaving. She pressed Barbe’s arm. “Nicolas,” she murmured, “Nicolas. There, there! Do you see nothing?” And whilst amongst the leafage the turtle-doves faintly cooed, Emma pointed out to Barbe the creature in the summerhouse, behind his window.