“How did it end?  To my shame, to my great shame, I was pitifully unhorsed by an incomparable feat!  Brutus understood, I think, that he would not get the better of me by violence, and judged it necessary to try cunning; after a pause which was most certainly a moment of reflection, the horse rose up, head down, upright on his fore-feet, with the skill, the calm, and the perfect equilibrium of a clown who walks on his hands.  Thus I tumbled into the sand, which, by good-luck, was thick in that spot.

“I tried to get up.  I screamed and fell back ridiculously, flat on my stomach, on my nose.  At the slightest movement I felt as though a knife ran through my left leg.  It’s a slight matter, however—­the rupture of a slender sinew; but though slight, the injury was none the less painful.  I succeeded, nevertheless, in turning over and sitting up; but just when, while rubbing my eyes, filled with sand, I was beginning to ask myself what in the midst of this tumult had become of my miserable dapple-gray, I saw over my head a large horse’s hoof descending.  Then this large hoof pressed, with a certain gentleness, however, on my chest, and pushed me delicately back on the ground, on my back this time.

“I was greatly discouraged; and feeling incapable of another effort, I remained in that position, continuing to ask myself what sort of a horse I had bought at Cheri’s, closing my eyes, and awaiting death.

“Suddenly I heard a curious trampling around me; a quantity of little hard things struck me on the face.  I opened my eyes, and perceived Brutus, who, with his fore-feet and hind-legs, was trying with incredible activity and prodigious skill to bury me in the sand.  He was doing his best, poor beast, and from time to time he stopped to gaze at his work; then, raising his head, he neighed and began his work again.  That lasted for a good three or four minutes, after which Brutus, judging me doubtless sufficiently interred, placed himself very respectfully on his knees before my tomb—­on his knees, literally on his knees!  He was saying, I suppose, a little prayer.  I looked at him.  It interested me extremely.

“His prayer finished, Brutus made a slight bow, went off a few steps, stopped, then, beginning to gallop, made at least twenty times the circuit of the open space in the middle of which he had buried me.  Brutus galloped very well, with even stride, head well held, on the right foot, making around me a perfect circle.  I followed him with my eyes, but it made me uneasy to see him go round and round and round.  I had the strength to cry ‘Stop! stop!’ The horse stopped and seemed embarrassed, without doubt asking himself what there was still to be done; but he perceived my hat, which in my fall had got separated from me, and at once made a new resolution:  he walked straight to the hat, seized it in his teeth, and galloped off, this time by one of the six alleys that led from my tomb.