which, at distant intervals, small lakes gleamed bluely. The man then
made a wide detour, and sounded the ground beneath him before advancing,
having but narrowly escaped from being swallowed up and buried beneath
one of those smiling plains which he could hear cracking at each step he
took. The giant grass, nourished by all the collected humus, concealed
pestiferous marshes, depths of liquid mud; and amongst the expanses of
verdure spread over the glaucous immensity to the very horizon there
were only narrow stretches of firm ground with which the traveller must
be acquainted if he would avoid disappearing for ever. One night the
man sank down as far as his waist. At each effort he made to extricate
himself the mud threatened to rise to his mouth. Then he remained
quite still for nearly a couple of hours; and when the moon rose he was
fortunately able to catch hold of a branch of a tree above his head. By
the time he reached a human dwelling his hands and feet were bruised and
bleeding, swollen with poisonous stings. He presented such a pitiable,
famished appearance that those who saw him were afraid of him. They
tossed him some food fifty yards away from the house, and the master of
it kept guard over his door with a loaded gun."

Florent stopped, his voice choked by emotion, and his eyes gazing
blankly before him. For some minutes he had seemed to be speaking to
himself alone. Little Pauline, who had grown drowsy, was lying in his
arms with her head thrown back, though striving to keep her wondering
eyes open. And Quenu, for his part, appeared to be getting impatient.

"Why, you stupid!" he shouted to Leon, "don't you know how to hold a
skin yet? What do you stand staring at me for? It's the skin you should
look at, not me! There, hold it like that, and don't move again!"

With his right hand Leon was raising a long string of sausage-skin, at