The clay under their touch sobbed like an adolescent girl into whom the south wind has long blown inquietude.  There where the clay was thirstiest and driest was heard a continual sound as of drinking, the panting of burning lips which yielded to the fullness of the storm.

The night which followed the storm was serene.  The downfall of rain had almost evaporated.  On the green meadow where Rabbit was in the habit of meeting his beloved, nothing was left of the storm, except ball-like masses of mist.  It looked as though they were paradisiacal cotton-plants whose downy whiteness was bursting beneath the flood of moonlight.  Along the steep banks of the river the thickets, heavy with rain, stood in rows like pilgrims bowed down under the weight of their wallets and leather-bottles.  Peace reigned.  It was as though an angel had rested his forehead in a hand.  Dawn shivering with cold was awaiting her sister the day, and the bowed-down leaves of grass prayed to the dawn.

And suddenly Rabbit crouching in the midst of his meadow saw a man approaching, and he wasn’t in the least afraid of him.  For the first time since the beginning of things, since man had set traps and snares the instinct of flight became extinguished in the timid soul of Rabbit.

The man, who approached, was dressed like the trunk of a tree in winter when it is clothed in the rough fustian of moss.  He wore a cowl on his head and sandals on his feet.  He carried no stick.  His hands were clasped inside the sleeves of his robe, and a cord served as girdle.  He kept his bony face turned toward the moon, and the moon was less pale than it.  One could clearly distinguish his eagle’s nose and his deep eyes, which were like those of asses, and his black beard on which tufts of lamb’s wool had been left by the thickets.

Two doves accompanied him.  They flitted from branch to branch in the sweetness of the night.  The tender beat of their wings was like the fallen petals of a flower, and as if these were striving to re-unite again and expand once more into a blossom.

Three poor dogs that wore spiked collars and wagged their tails preceded the man, and an ancient wolf was licking the hem of his garment.  A ewe and her lamb, bleating, uncertain, and enraptured, pressed forward amid the crocuses and trod upon their emerald, while three hawks began to play with the two doves.  A timid night-bird whistled with joy amid the acorns.  Then it spread its wings and overtook the hawks and the doves, the lamb and the ewe, the dogs, the wolf, and the man.

And the man approached Rabbit and said to him: 

“I am Francis.  I love thee and I greet thee, Oh thou, my brother.  I greet thee in the name of the sky which mirrors the waters and the sparkling stones, in the name of the wild sorrel, the bark of the trees and the seeds which are thy sustenance.  Come with these sinless ones who accompany me and cling to my foot-steps with the faith of the ivy which clasps the tree without considering that soon, perhaps, the woodcutter will come.  Oh Rabbit, I bring to thee the Faith which we share one in another, the Faith which is life itself, all that of which we are ignorant, but in which we nevertheless believe.  Oh dear and kindly Rabbit, thou gentle wanderer, wilt thou follow our Faith?”