Entering the field, I saw something rolling on its back with its paws in the air, crushing the oats right and left, getting up, jumping about and browsing quite at its ease. For a moment I was afraid to run after it, not knowing what kind of beast it was. I could see nothing clearly but its ears, which were too long for a horse; but the body was too black and stout for a donkey. I approached it gently; it seemed neither wild nor mischievous, and then I knew it was a mule, though I had seldom seen one, for we don't raise them in our part of the country, and the muleteers never pass this way. I was just going to catch him and already had my hand on his mane when he threw up his hindquarters and lashing out a dozen kicks which I had scarcely time to avoid, he leaped like a hare over the ditch and ran away so quickly that in a moment he was out of sight. Not wishing to have my oats ruined by the return of the beast, I put off going to bed till I could have an easy mind. I returned to the house to get my shoes and waistcoat, and after fastening the doors I went through the fields in the direction the mule had taken. I had little doubt that he belonged to the troop of the dark man, Joseph's friend. Joseph had certainly advised me to see nothing of him, but now that I had touched a living animal I was afraid of nothing. Nobody likes ghosts; but when you know you are dealing with solid things it is another affair; and the moment I realized that the dark man was a man, no matter how strong he was or how much he had daubed himself over, I didn't care for him any more than I did for a weasel. You must have heard say that I was one of the strongest fellows of these parts in my young days; in fact, such as I am now, I am not yet afraid of any man. Moreover, I was as nimble as a roach, and I knew that in dangers where the strength of a man was not enough to save him, it would have needed the wings of a bird to overtake me in running. Accordingly, having provided myself with a rope and my own gun (which didn't have consecrated balls, but could carry truer than my father's), I set out on a voyage of discovery. I had scarcely taken a couple of hundred steps when I saw three more animals of the same kind in my brother-in-law's pasture, where they were behaving themselves just as badly as possible. Like the first brute, they allowed me to approach them, and then immediately galloped off to a farm on the estate of Aulnières, where they met another troop of mules capering about as lively as mice, rearing and kicking in the rising moonlight,--a regular _donkey-chase_, which you know is what they call the dance of the devil's she-asses, when the fairies and the will-o-the-wisps gallop up there among the clouds.