134 



THE RAT 



possible. I was like a man who has been very ill, 

 who longs for the plash of waves on the seashore. 



On the following day, therefore, we set off in 

 search of the promised land, and luckily we had 

 not far to go, for the joys of guiding the blind did 

 not seem to appeal to me quite so much as formerly, 

 a sure sign that my brain was beginning to recover 

 from its malady. There was no wilderness to be 

 crossed, no fiery serpents to bite us on the way, 

 only a few cool meadows and hedges already turn- 

 ing green, and, after cautiously coasting along the 

 ditches of two fields, I had much ado to save my 

 blind old incubus from falling headlong into just 

 such a stream as I had pictured to myself. 



But before I try to describe to you my new 

 abode of rest and peace, I must finish off the story 

 of the blind companion of my wanderings as far as 

 it is known to me. I told him exactly the kind of 

 place to which I had brought him, and then I 

 gently broke the news to him that I had no inten- 

 tion of continuing to live with him after I had 

 once made him comfortable. He took it very 

 nicely, for he was a gentlemanly old person, and 

 assured me that he was quite capable of looking 

 after himself, that his appetite and powers of 

 digestion had been greatly weakened by age, and 



