I was in the best of spirits when I at last started back towards home. The path to Clamecy ran straight enough, but when I came to the crossroads, I could not help glancing down a by-way, which went wandering across the meadows, between the blossoming hedges.
Said I to myself, "How nice it would be to leave the stupid highroad, and follow that little path; the day is yet young, and anyhow it would never do to get home ahead of the sun, and early or late the wife will have something to say to me. . . . I really must go a step or two farther, and have a look at that dear little pear tree; surely those are not snowflakes? no, of course not, they are the white petals blown off by the wind. Listen to the birds! and the tinkling of the brook, sliding along under the grass, like a kitten chasing a ball. . . . I have a great mind to follow it, and see if the roots of this oak will not stop it; where can it have gone? well, upon my word! it has squeezed its way under the big gouty knees of yonder elm,—did you ever see such impudence? I might as well go and find out where this path does lead."
It was all very well to saunter along thus at the heels of my vagrant shadow, but in the back of my head I knew perfectly well where that beguiling footway would take me. Like Ulysses, I tried to
