The third attempt generally creates or dissipates the charm, cogitated
Isegrim. May it be so in this present instance! As he mentally uttered
this ejaculation, he found himself in the presence of a third shepherd.
“Ah! my worthy, my excellent friend,” cried he, “I have been looking for
you the whole day. I want to communicate a piece of news to you. You must
know that I have been struggling desperately of late to regenerate my
character. The enormity of my past career, haunted as it is with phantoms
of blood and massacre, is for ever before my eyes, and humbles me--oh,
dear! how much nobody can guess. I have grown very penitent, and very,
very soft-hearted altogether, Shepherd.” Here Isegrim hung his head,
overcome for a moment by his emotions. “Still, Shepherd, still--and this
is what I want you to understand--I find I can make after all but slight
progress by myself. I go on smack smooth enough for a while, and then my
zeal flags. I require encouragement and sympathy, and the companionship
of the good and the gentle, who could give me advice, and point out to me
the path of rectitude continually. In short, you see, if--if you would be
but generous enough to allow a sheep or two of enlightened principles to
take a walk out with me occasionally, in the cool of the evening, along
some sequestered valley, sacred to philosophic musings, I feel that it
would prove of the greatest advantage to me, in a moral and intellectual
point of view. But ah! I perceive you are laughing at me: may I ask
whether there is any thing in my request that strikes you as ridiculous?”
“Permit me to answer your question by another,” said the Shepherd, with a
sneer. “Pray, Master Wolf, how old are you?”
“Old enough to be fierce enough,” exclaimed Isegrim, with something of
the ferocity of old days in his tone and eye; “let me tell you that,
Master Shepherd.”
“And, like all the rest you have been telling me, it is a lie,” was the
Shepherd’s response. “You would be fierce if you could; but, to your
mortification, you are grown imbecile--you have the will, but want the
power. Your mouth betrays you, if your tongue don’t, old deceiver! Yet,
though you can bite no longer, you are still, I dare say, able to mumble;
and on the whole, I shouldn’t fancy being a sheep’s head and shoulders
in your way just now. What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the
flesh, says the proverb; and I believe you are one of the last animals
one could expect to falsify it. I’ll take right good care to keep you at
crook’s length, my crafty neighbour; make yourself certain of that!”