‘Leave me alone, do! all you creatures!’ she cried with a hearty sonorous laugh, feeling tickled by all the feathers, claws, and beaks and paws rubbing against her.

However, she did not attempt to free herself.  As she often said, she would have let herself be devoured; it seemed so sweet to feel all this life cling to her and encompass her with the warmth of eider-down.  At last only one cat persisted in remaining on her back.

‘It’s Moumou,’ she said.  ‘His paws are like velvet.’  Then, calling her brother’s attention to the yard, she proudly added:  ’See, how clean it is!’

The yard had indeed been swept out, washed, and raked over.  But the disturbed water and the forked-up litter exhaled so fetid and powerful an odour that Abbe Mouret half choked.  The dung was heaped against the graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound.

‘What a pile, eh?’ continued Desiree, leading her brother into the pungent vapour, ’I put it all there myself, nobody helped me.  Go on, it isn’t dirty.  It cleans.  Look at my arms.’

As she spoke she held out her arms, which she had merely dipped into a pail of water—­regal arms they were, superbly rounded, blooming like full white roses amidst the manure.

‘Yes, yes,’ gently said the priest, ’you have worked hard.  It’s very nice now.’

Then he turned towards the wicket, but she stopped him.

‘Do wait a bit.  You shall see them all.  You have no idea—­’ And so saying, she dragged him to the rabbit house under the shed.

‘There are young ones in all the hutches,’ she said, clapping her hands in glee.

Then at great length she proceeded to explain to him all about the litters.  He had to crouch down and come close to the wire netting, whilst she gave him minute details.  The mother does, with big restless ears, eyed him askance, panting and motionless with fear.  Then, in one hutch, he saw a hairy cavity wherein crawled a living heap, an indistinct dusky mass heaving like a single body.  Close by some young ones, with enormous heads, ventured to the edge of the hole.  A little farther were yet stronger ones, who looked like young rats, ferreting and leaping about with their raised rumps showing their white scuts.  Others, white ones with pale ruby eyes, and black ones with jet eyes, galloped round their hutches with playful grace.  Now a scare would make them bolt off swiftly, revealing at every leap their slender reddened paws.  Next they would squat down all in a heap, so closely packed that their heads could no longer be seen.

‘It is you they are frightened at,’ Desiree kept on saying.  ’They know me well.’

She called them and drew some bread-crust from her pocket.  The little rabbits then became more confident, and, with puckered noses, kept sidling up, and rearing against the netting one by one.  She kept them like that for a minute to show her brother the rosy down upon their bellies, and then gave her crust to the boldest one.  Upon this the whole of them flocked up, sliding forward and squeezing one another, but never quarreling.  At one moment three little ones were all nibbling the same piece of crust, but others darted away, turning to the wall so as to eat in peace, while their mothers in the rear remained snuffing distrustfully and refused the crusts.