the neighbouring forest. I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are
nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat,
whose sidelong contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in
our own homes. She, at least, curses us in her mysterious heart; but all
the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.
They do not love us, do not know us, scarcely notice us. They are
unaware of our life, our death, our departure, our return, our sadness,
our joy, our smile. They do not even hear the sound of our voice, so
soon as it no longer threatens them; and, when they look at us, it is
with the distrustful bewilderment of the horse, in whose eye still
hovers the infatuation of the elk or gazelle that sees us for the first
time, or with the dull stupor of the ruminants, who look upon us as a
momentary and useless accident of the pasture.

For thousands of years, they have been living at our side, as foreign
to our thoughts, our affections, our habits as though the least
fraternal of the stars had dropped them but yesterday on our globe. In
the boundless interval that separates man from all the other creatures,
we have succeeded only, by dint of patience, in making them take two or
three illusory steps. And if, to-morrow, leaving their feelings toward
us untouched, nature were to give them the intelligence and the weapons
wherewith to conquer us, I confess that I should distrust the hasty
vengeance of the horse, the obstinate reprisals of the ass and the
maddened meekness of the sheep. I should shun the cat as I should shun
the tiger; and even the good cow, solemn and somnolent, would inspire me
with but a wary confidence. As for the hen, with her round, quick eye,
as when discovering a slug or a worm, I am sure that she would devour me
without a thought.