THE GOAT 



mal would break its neck, and sometimes having no 

 more secure support than a narrow ledge that offers 

 barely room enough for its four hoofs. From this 

 perilous position it stretches its neck in an effort to 

 reach the neighboring bush, a bush no better than 

 countless others that are in places easy of access; 

 but the difficulty gives it an added charm, and to 

 get it the goat risks its life on slopes that would be 

 its destruction if it should chance to slip. But don't 

 worry about that : the goat will not fall ; its sinewy 

 leg is of unequalled surety, and its head, giddy 

 though it seems, is never seized with vertigo on the 

 brink of a precipice. The coveted bit of foliage is 

 reached, the bush twisted out of shape in its attain- 

 ment, and the ascent continues from one projection 

 to another. The goat is at the top of the rock. It 

 proclaims its prowess to the surrounding world with 

 bleatings. The sheep are down there, beneath its 

 feet. Proudly it surveys them, saying perhaps to 

 itself: Poor, timid creatures, they will never climb 

 up here ! 



6 i I must tell you, my friends, that the goat is very 

 hard to keep in flocks. Its wandering propensity 

 always impels it to stray, and its predilection for 

 precipices leads it to places where it would be dan- 

 gerous for the shepherd to follow. It has a still 

 worse caprice. I have pictured the goat to you as 

 abandoning at the first opportunity the rich grass in 

 which the sheep delights, to scale the rocky summit 

 and crop the sparse shrubbery growing on some per- 

 ilous ledge. It is an undoubted fact that to the ten- 



