360 The Hunting JVasps 



better to say about you, he might as well have 

 held his tongue ; but he did not know you, and 

 in his day there were only just a few who were 

 beginning to have a dim conception of your 

 nature. 



While going over some passage of the tire- 

 some poem for the next day's lesson, I would 

 indulge my fancy for another kind of education. 

 I visited the Linnet in her nest, on a juniper- 

 bush standing as high as myself ; I watched the 

 Jay picking an acorn on the ground ; I came 

 upon the Crayfish, still quite soft after shedding 

 his shell ; I made inquiries as to the exact date 

 when the Cockchafers were due ; I went in 

 quest of the first full-blown Cuckoo-flower. 

 Plants and animals, that wondrous poem of 

 which a faint echo was beginning to wake in my 

 young brain, made a very pleasant change from 

 the uninspiring alexandrine. The problem of 

 life and that other one, with its dark terrors, 

 the problem of death, at times passed through 

 my mind. It was a fleeting obsession, soon 

 forgotten by the mercurial spirits of youth. 

 Nevertheless, the tremendous question would 

 recur, brought to mind by this incident or 

 that. 



Passing one day by a slaughter-house, I saw 

 an Ox driven in by the butcher. I have always 

 had an insurmountable horror of blood ; when 



