Stranica 59 [59]
OCR
eV ON, ALND NB TE " You shall not escape me, sorceress!” cried the seneschal, and, with a grasp like that of Hercules, he seized the cow by the tail and dragged her out of the stable. “Abracadabra!” cried Finette. "May the cow tail hold you, villain, and may you hold the cow’s tail till you have both been around the world together." And behold! the cow darted off like lightning, dragging the unhappy seneschal after her. Nothing stopped the two inseparable comrades; they rushed over mountains and valleys, crossed marshes, rivers, quagmires, and brakes, glided over the seas without sinking, were frozen in Siberia and scorched in Africa, climbed the Himalayas, descended Mont Blanc, and at length, after thirty-six hours of a journey, the like of which had never been seen, both stopped out of breath in the public square of the village. A seneschal harnessed to a cow’s tail is a sight not to be seen every day, and all the peasants in the neighborhood crowded together to wonder at the spectacle. But, torn as he was by the cactuses of Barbary and the thickets of Tartary, the seneschal had lost nothing of his haughty air. With a threatening gesture he dispersed the rabble, and limped to his house to taste the repose of which he began to feel the need. VI While the steward, the bailiff, and the seneschal were experiencing these little unpleasantnesses, of which they 35
