But the rabbits and the hares played fearlessly at sunrise, and again in the cool of the twilight, so then it was that Gian-Luca talked to them, “Have you got a God?” he would ask them gravely.
The creatures would continue their artless gambols, apparently not hearing Gian-Luca; or, if they heard him, they would scamper away.
“They do not know either,” thought Gian-Luca.
There were times of innocent happiness, however, when he would feel like a schoolboy; as, for instance, when he first saw a herd of red deer in the northern part of the forest. He had wandered a long way that afternoon, and he chanced on the herd at sundown; the deer stood all together in a wide, open space, with their antlers black against the sky. Their magnificent heads were raised questioningly, their eyes looked attentive and fearful; but Gian-Luca had hidden himself behind a tree, scarcely daring to breathe in his surprise and excitement, for these beasts could seldom be taken unawares—they were hunted and had therefore grown wise. He stood so still that the deer began feeding, bending strong, chestnut necks; Gian-Luca could hear the crisp noise of their cropping and the muffled sound of their lazy movements as they pushed their way through the grass. Then he must have shifted his hand a little, for a twig snapped under his fingers, and up went every head, while the herd wheeled abruptly—in a moment it had bounded away.
Gian-Luca gradually grew familiar with nearly all the beasts of the forests—stoats and weasels, both thoroughly hard-hearted hunters with colossal appetites for birds’ eggs; moles and hedgehogs, and the queer little plush-coated shrewmice with their long, prehistoric-looking noses; foxes and badgers, who were seen for the most part soon after the evening star; squirrels, who were seen at any old time; and the shy, wild ponies who were timid at first, but who afterwards came to know Gian-Luca, so that sometimes the mares would bring him their foals, born in the forest overnight. And birds! Were there ever so many under heaven, or such a variety of songs? All day there was singing, and all night as well, for nightingales sang in the beech trees in June, and Gian-Luca must lie awake under the stars because of their splendid music. He learnt to know the songs and the habits of the birds before he discovered the names of the singers.
“That must be the fellow who shivers while he sings,” he would think, as he listened to the tremulous trill of a wood-wren swinging just above him. Or: “That must be the bird with the little white chin—he always sounds cross like that when he feels frightened.” And sure enough out would bustle a whitethroat, furiously angry with Gian-Luca.
And then there were all the creeping things; the long, graceful grass snakes, very self-conscious and fearfully embarrassed by a stranger; the hot-tempered adders, who were better avoided because of their unregenerate nature; and the harmless but unprepossessing slow-worms, very stupid, nearsighted and inept. There was also a goodly company of beetles, and these varied in disposition; some were peaceable, others quite quarrelsome at times, and one of their number was a veritable fiend—a species of Nero, but with ten times his courage and more than ten times his cunning.
Gentle and fierce by turns was the forest, like a great, throbbing human heart. Its gentler thoughts came to life in its bracken, in its delicate mosses and silvery lichens, in its little wild berries—the food of the birds—in its pools and its glades and its flowers. Gian-Luca had come at the time of the bluebells, but out in the forest they had not depressed him; and because he had once pushed them roughly with his foot, he had knelt down beside them and buried his face in their dewy, ineffable coolness. Anemones and cuckooflower had been blooming, and quite soon the hawthorn had followed. Now it was June, the month of dog-roses, the month of the kingcup in damp, boggy places, the month of forget-me-nots growing along streams or clustering beside quiet water. The days held the nights imprisoned in their brightness, for the dawns broke early and the twilights were long; the darkness, when it came, must perforce reflect light in an endless faint afterglow. Long before the big moon was ready to vanish, the sun would be eyeing her out of the east; then the night and the morning must love one another in a tangle of leaves and birds’ wings and stars.
Below in the forest Gian-Luca would be lying with his face turned up to the sky; and the soul of the forest, always wrapt round with peace, in spite of that heart fierce and gentle by turns, would come timidly touching the soul of Gian-Luca—trying to tell him something. Then Gian-Luca would lie very still and would listen, but after a little he would sigh.
“I cannot find God—not yet,” he must answer; and perhaps he would get up to look for his God, meeting Him face to face in the sunrise, but passing Him by unseeing.
III
That July Gian-Luca fell in with some gipsies who were camping in a clearing near a pine grove; and, because by now he looked rather like themselves, the gipsies took kindly to him. The family consisted
