The situation was beautiful.  From one edge of the village a flowery plain extended in a wide sweep to the river—­the Meuse; from the rear edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was the great oak forest—­a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their homes in there.  In fact, one was still living in there in our own time.  It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a cavalier’s hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don’t know what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said who knew about dragons.  It was thought that this dragon was of a brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it, therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion.  It was not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when there is no evidence to form it on.  If you build a person without any bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an opinion.  But I will take up this matter more at large at another time, and try to make the justness of my position appear.  As to that dragon, I always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for that has always been the color of dragons.  That this dragon lay but a little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell.  It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be and we not suspect it.

In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest had become the one that abolished dragons.  Pere Guillaume Fronte did it in this case.  He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners, and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the smell never wholly passed away.  Not that any had ever smelt the smell again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other—­and lacked bones, you see.  I know that the creature was there before the exorcism, but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be so positive about.