Three Tales by Gustave Flaubert

Author:Gustave Flaubert
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2008-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

One winter morning he set out before dawn, well armed, with a crossbow on his shoulder and a quiver of arrows slung over his saddle bow.

He was riding a Danish jennet, with two basset hounds following behind; the ground echoed to the sound of its hoofs as he rode steadily along. Little beads of hoar frost clung to his cape; the wind blew strong and chill. The horizon began to brighten to one side of him and in the pale morning light he caught sight of a group of rabbits hopping around outside their burrows. The two basset hounds were upon them in a flash, frantically snatching at them as they scattered and breaking their backs.

Shortly afterwards, he came to a forest. A wood grouse, numbed by the cold, had fallen asleep on the branch of a tree, its head tucked under its wing. With a single backward stroke of his sword, Julian cut off its two feet and then continued on his way without even stopping to retrieve it.

Three hours later, he found himself on a mountain peak, so high that the sky appeared almost black. In front of him a rock face rather like a long wall sloped downwards towards the edge of a deep ravine. At the far end of this wall, two mountain goats stood peering down into the abyss below. Julian did not have his arrows with him, having left his horse behind, and he decided he would climb down the wall in order to get near to them. He approached barefoot and bent almost double and managed to come right up to the first of the two goats. He plunged a dagger between its ribs. The other goat, seized with panic, leapt into the void. Julian lunged forward in order to stab it, but his right foot slipped and he fell on to the dead body of the first goat, with his face looking down into the abyss and his two arms spreadeagled in front of him.

He came back down towards the plain and made his way beside a line of willow trees that grew along the bank of a river. Now and then a crane would swoop down very low above his head. Julian lashed at them with his whip and not one of them escaped his aim.

By now the warmer air had melted the frost, swathes of mist drifted upwards and the sun appeared. In the far distance he saw the glint of a frozen lake, its surface like a sheet of lead. In the middle of the lake stood an animal that Julian did not recognize, a beaver with a black snout. Despite the distance, his arrow found its mark and Julian was disappointed that he could not carry off its skin.

He now entered an avenue of great trees, whose tops formed as it were a triumphal arch leading into a forest. A young roe deer sprang out of a thicket, a buck appeared within a clearing, a badger shuffled out of a hole and a peacock stood on the grass spreading its tail.

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