“No,” Rabbit replied, “I have given no thought to such things.  I would have followed you because I came to know you as intimately as the earthly hedge on which the lambs hung the warm flakes of snow with which I used to line and keep warm my nest.  Vainly I have sought throughout these heavenly meadows this God of whom you are speaking.  But while my companions discovered Him at once and found their Paradise, I lost my way.  From the day when you left us and from the instant that I gained Heaven, my childish and untamed heart has beaten with homesickness for the earth.

“Oh Francis, Oh my friend, Oh you in whom alone I have faith, give back to me my earth.  I feel that I am not at home here.  Give back to me my furrows full of mud, give back to me my clayey paths.  Give back to me my native valley where the horns of the hunters make the mists stir.  Give back to me the wagon-track on the roadway from which I heard sound the packs of hounds with their hanging ears, like an angelus.  Give back to me my timidity.  Give back to me my fright.  Give back to me the agitation that I felt when suddenly a shot swept the fragrant mint beneath my bounds, or when amid the bushes of wild quince my nose touched the cold copper of a snare.  Give back to me the dawn upon the waters from which the skillful fisherman withdraws his lines heavy with eels.  Give back to me the blue gleaning under the moon, and my timid and clandestine loves amid the wild sorrel, where I could no longer distinguish the rosy tongue of my beloved from the dew-laden petal of the eglantine which had fallen upon the grass.  Give back to me my weakness, oh thou, my dear heart.  And go, and say unto God, that I can no longer live with Him.”

“Oh Rabbit,” Francis answered, “my friend, gentle and suspicious like a peasant, Oh Rabbit of little faith, you blaspheme.  If you have not known how to find your God it is because in order to find this God, you would have had to die like your companions.”

“But if I die, what will become of me?” cried he with the hide of the color of stubble.

And Francis said: 

“If you die you will become your Paradise.”

* * * * *

Thus talking they reached the edge of the Paradise of beasts.  There the Paradise of men began.  Rabbit turned his head, and read at the top of a sign-post on a plate of blue cast-iron where an arrow indicated the direction

Castetis to Balansun—­5 M.

The day was so hot that the letters of the inscription seemed to quiver in the dull light of summer.  In the distance, on the road, there were clouds of dust, as in Blue Beard when Sister Anne is asked:  “Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see anything coming?” This pale dryness, how magnificent it was, and how filled it was with the bitter fragrance of mint.

And Rabbit saw a horse and a covered cart approaching.

It was a sorry nag and dragged a two-wheeled cart and was unable to move except in a jerky sort of gallop.  Every leap made its disjointed skeleton quiver and jolted its harness and made its earth-colored mane fly in the air, shiny and greenish, like the beard of an ancient mariner.  Wearily as though they were paving-stones the animal lifted its hoofs which were swollen like tumors....