Oldal 59 [59]
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 Tar¬
tary, 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
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