Romance of the Rabbit | Page 4

come to him. Their origin is lost in the night of time where
everything is all confused and one.
Did he, perhaps, come out of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat at the time
when the dove, which retains the sound of great waters in its cooing,
brought the olive-branch, the sign that the great wave was subsiding?
Or had he been created, such as he is, with his short tail, his stubbly
hide, his cleft lip, his floppy ear, and his trodden-down heel? Did God,
the Eternal, set him all ready-made beneath the laurels of Paradise?
Lying crouched beneath a rosebush he had, perhaps, seen Eve, and
watched her when she had wandered amid the irises, displaying the
grace of her brown legs like a prancing young horse, and extending her
golden breasts before the mystic pomegranates. Or was he at first
nothing but an incandescent mist? Had he already lived in the heart of
the porphyries? Had he, incombustible, escaped from their boiling lava,
in order to inhabit each in turn the cell of granite and of the alga before
he dared show his nose to the world? Did he owe his pitch-black eyes
to the molten jet, his fur to the clayey ooze, his soft ears to the
sea-wrack, his ardent blood to the liquid fire?
...His origins mattered little to him at this moment; he was resting
peacefully in his marl-pit. It was in a sultry August toward the end of a
heavy afternoon. The sky was of the deep-blue color of a plum, puffed
out here and there, as if ready to burst upon the plain.
Soon the rain began to patter on the leaves of the brake. Faster and
faster came the drumming of the long rods of rain. But Rabbit was not
afraid, because the rain fell in accordance with a rhythm which was
very familiar to him. And besides the rain did not strike him for it had
not yet been able to pierce the thick vault of green above him. A single
drop only fell to the bottom of the marl-pit, and splashed and always
fell again at the same place.
So there was nothing in this concert to trouble the heart of Rabbit. He

was quite familiar with the song in which the tears of the rain form the
strophes, and he knew that neither dog, nor man, nor fox, nor hawk had
any part in it. The sky was like a harp on which the silver strings of the
streaming rain were strung from above down to the earth. And down
here below every single thing made this harp resound in its own
peculiar fashion, and in turn it again took up its own melody. Under the
green fingers of the leaves the crystal strings sounded faint and hollow.
It was as though it were the voice of the soul of the mists.
The clay under their touch sobbed like an adolescent girl into whom the
south wind has long blown inquietude. There where the clay was
thirstiest and driest was heard a continual sound as of drinking, the
panting of burning lips which yielded to the fullness of the storm.
The night which followed the storm was serene. The downfall of rain
had almost evaporated. On the green meadow where Rabbit was in the
habit of meeting his beloved, nothing was left of the storm, except
ball-like masses of mist. It looked as though they were paradisiacal
cotton-plants whose downy whiteness was bursting beneath the flood
of moonlight. Along the steep banks of the river the thickets, heavy
with rain, stood in rows like pilgrims bowed down under the weight of
their wallets and leather-bottles. Peace reigned. It was as though an
angel had rested his forehead in a hand. Dawn shivering with cold was
awaiting her sister the day, and the bowed-down leaves of grass prayed
to the dawn.
And suddenly Rabbit crouching in the midst of his meadow saw a man
approaching, and he wasn't in the least afraid of him. For the first time
since the beginning of things, since man had set traps and snares the
instinct of flight became extinguished in the timid soul of Rabbit.
The man, who approached, was dressed like the trunk of a tree in
winter when it is clothed in the rough fustian of moss. He wore a cowl
on his head and sandals on his feet. He carried no stick. His hands were
clasped inside the sleeves of his robe, and a cord served as girdle. He
kept his bony face turned toward the moon, and the moon was less pale
than it. One could clearly distinguish his eagle's nose and his deep eyes,
which were like those of asses, and his black beard on which tufts of
lamb's