prevent the cold water from running down his back and chest; but he soon
found that it was penetrating the thin material of which his clothes
were made, and he glanced round him with the agonized look of a man who
does not know where to hide his body and to rest his head, and has no
place of shelter in the whole world.

Night came on, and wrapped the country in obscurity, and in the
distance, in a meadow, he saw a dark spot on the grass; it was a cow,
and so he got over the ditch by the roadside and went up to her, without
exactly knowing what he was doing. When he got close to her, she raised
her great head to him, and he thought: "If I only had a jug, I could get
a little milk." He looked at the cow, and the cow looked at him, and
then suddenly giving her a violent kick in the side, he said: "Get up!"

The animal got up slowly, letting her heavy udders hang down below her;
then the man lay down on his back between the animal's legs, and he
drank for a long time, squeezing her warm swollen teats which tasted of
the cow stall, with both hands, and he drank as long as any milk
remained in that living well. But the icy rain began to fall more
heavily, and he saw no place of shelter on the whole of that bare plain.
He was cold, and he looked set a light which was shining among the
trees, in the window of a house.

The cow had lain down again, heavily, and he sat down by her side and
stroked her head, grateful for the nourishment she had given him. The
animal's strong, thick breath, which came out of her nostrils like two
jets of steam in the evening air, blew onto the workman's face, who
said: "You are not cold, inside there!" He put his hands onto her chest
and under her legs to find some warmth there, and then the idea struck
him, that he might pass the night against that large, warm stomach. So