you feel the hunting-dogs' breath on your poor skin?"

"Oh my friend," answered he, "what am I seeking? I am seeking my
God. As long as you were my God on earth I felt at peace. But in this
Paradise where I have lost my way, because your presence is no longer
with me, Oh divine brother of the beast, my soul feels suffocated for
I do not find my God."

"Do you think, then," said Francis, "that God abandons rabbits, and
that they alone of the whole world have no title to Paradise?"

"No," Rabbit replied, "I have given no thought to such things. I would
have followed you because I came to know you as intimately as the
earthly hedge on which the lambs hung the warm flakes of snow with
which I used to line and keep warm my nest. Vainly I have sought
throughout these heavenly meadows this God of whom you are speaking.
But while my companions discovered Him at once and found their
Paradise, I lost my way. From the day when you left us and from the
instant that I gained Heaven, my childish and untamed heart has beaten
with homesickness for the earth.

"Oh Francis, Oh my friend, Oh you in whom alone I have faith, give
back to me my earth. I feel that I am not at home here. Give back to
me my furrows full of mud, give back to me my clayey paths. Give back
to me my native valley where the horns of the hunters make the mists
stir. Give back to me the wagon-track on the roadway from which I
heard sound the packs of hounds with their hanging ears, like an
angelus. Give back to me my timidity. Give back to me my fright. Give
back to me the agitation that I felt when suddenly a shot swept the
fragrant mint beneath my bounds, or when amid the bushes of wild