The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of these
preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the common. As long
as I was within sight of the windows, a secret shame and the fear of some
laughable defeat withheld me from tampering with Modestine. She tripped
along upon her four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait; from
time to time she shook her ears or her tail; and she looked so small
under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the ford without
difficulty--there was no doubt about the matter, she was docility
itself--and once on the other bank, where the road begins to mount
through pine-woods, I took in my right hand the unhallowed staff, and
with a quaking spirit applied it to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her
pace for perhaps three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet.
Another application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am
worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my conscience to
lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and looked her all over from
head to foot; the poor brute's knees were trembling and her breathing was
distressed; it was plain that she could go no faster on a hill. God
forbid, thought I, that I should brutalise this innocent creature; let
her go at her own pace, and let me patiently follow.
What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to describe; it was
something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run; it
kept me hanging on each foot for an incredible length of time; in five
minutes it exhausted the spirit and set up a fever in all the muscles of
the leg. And yet I had to keep close at hand and measure my advance
exactly upon hers; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on
a few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began to
browse. The thought that this was to last from here to Alais nearly
broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, this promised to be the
most tedious. I tried to tell myself it was a lovely day; I tried to
charm my foreboding spirit with tobacco; but I had a vision ever present
to me of the long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of
figures ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute,
and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no nearer to the
goal.
In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, perhaps forty
years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and arrayed in the green
tail-coat of the country. He overtook us hand over hand, and stopped to
consider our pitiful advance.
'Your donkey,' says he, 'is very old?'