that he could neither see, nor hear, nor smell, nor touch. The life of
the trees--is that it? he asked himself. A remote and mysterious life
was certainly breathing about him, and he regretted he was without a
sense to apprehend this life.

Again and again it seemed that the forest was about to whisper its
secret, but something always happened to interrupt. Once it was
certainly Azariah's fault, for just as the trees were about to speak he
picked up a leaf and began to explain how the shape of an oak leaf
differed from that of the leaf of the chestnut and the ash. A patter was
heard among the leaves. There she goes--a hare! Joseph said, and a
moment afterwards a white thing appeared. A white weasel, Azariah said.
Shall we follow him? Joseph asked, and Azariah answered that it would be
useless to follow. We should soon miss them in the thickets. And he
continued his discourse upon trees, hoping that Joseph would never again
mistake a sycamore for a chestnut. And what is that tree so dark and
gloomy rising up through all the other trees, Joseph asked, so much
higher than any of them? That is a cedar, Azariah said. Do doves build
in cedars? Azariah did not know, and the tree did not inspire a climb:
it seemed to forbid any attempt on its privacy. Do trees talk when they
are alone? Joseph asked Azariah, and his preceptor gave the very
sensible answer that the life of trees is unknown to us, but that trees
had always awakened religious emotions in men. The earliest tribes were
tree-worshippers, which was very foolish, for we can fell trees and put
them to our usage.

They had come to a part of the forest in which there seemed to be
neither birds nor beasts and Joseph had begun to feel the forest a
little wearisome and to wish for a change, when the trees suddenly
stopped, and before them lay a sunny interspace full of tall grass with