lay down under a tree; and he would come home at night covered
with earth and blood, with thistles in his hair and smelling of
wild beasts. He grew to be like them. And when his mother kissed
him, he responded coldly to her caress and seemed to be thinking
of deep and serious things.

He killed bears with a knife, bulls with a hatchet, and wild boars
with a spear; and once, with nothing but a stick, he defended
himself against some wolves, which were gnawing corpses at the
foot of a gibbet.

* * * * *

One winter morning he set out before daybreak, with a bow slung
across his shoulder and a quiver of arrows attached to the pummel
of his saddle. The hoofs of his steed beat the ground with
regularity and his two beagles trotted close behind. The wind was
blowing hard and icicles clung to his cloak. A part of the horizon
cleared, and he beheld some rabbits playing around their burrows.
In an instant, the two dogs were upon them, and seizing as many as
they could, they broke their backs in the twinkling of an eye.

Soon he came to a forest. A woodcock, paralysed by the cold,
perched on a branch, with its head hidden under its wing. Julian,
with a lunge of his sword, cut off its feet, and without stopping
to pick it up, rode away.

Three hours later he found himself on the top of a mountain so
high that the sky seemed almost black. In front of him, a long,
flat rock hung over a precipice, and at the end two wild goats