pursuing him with their hounds through the hot dank solitudes that were his rightful kingdom. She had sympathy with the hunted, not with the hunters.
The boar, let alone, did no living thing harm; he ate the green leaves, the wet grass, the red reeds, the wild fruits; he only wanted the air to breathe, the moor to roam over, the pool to bathe in. Where was the sin of such a simple need? She did not reason, she only felt, and the fate of the hunted and innocent brutes seemed a wrong to her, a cruel and wanton wrong.
To-day she saw a herd of them, at a little distance, in peace, pushing through the reedy thickets, happy in their own rough clumsy way, lifting their bristling manes above the flower-foam of the spring-snowflakes and the Lenten lilies.
She was glad to see them so, and went on, content.
The sun shone, the birds sang, the roots of the nuphar lutea were beginning to spread their broad leaves on the waters, the primroses and daffodils were making the sombre earth bright in many a nook by the shallows and pools. It was in Maremma, accursed Maremma, but it was springtime,
