MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

[0608] its sounds again, and the shepherd watching me sleep and under
whose eyes I opened my eyes. [0609] Beside him a panting dog, watching
me too, but less closely than his master, for from time to time
he stopped watching me to gnaw at his flesh, furiously, where the
ticks were in him I suppose.

[0610] Did he take me for a black sheep
entangled in the brambles and was he waiting an order from his
master to drag me out? [0611] I don't think so. [0612] I don't smell like a
sheep, I wish I smelt like a sheep, or a puckaun ^{[⁁]buck-goat}. [0613] When I wake I
see the first things quite clearly, the first things that offer,
and I understand them, when they are not too difficult.

[0614] Then in
my eyes and in my head a fine rain begins to fall, as from a rose,
[0615] highly important. [0616] So I knew at once it was a shepher^d and his dog
I had before me, above me rather, for they had not left the path.
[0617] And I identified the bleating too, without any trouble, the anxious
bleating of the sheep, missing the dog at their heels.

[0618] It is then
too that the meaning of words is least obscure to me, so that I
said, with tranquil assurance, Where are you taking them, to the
fields or to the slaughterhouse ^shambles? [0619] I must have completely lost my
sense of direction, as if direction had anything to do with the
matter.

[0620] For even if he was going towards the town, what prevented
him from skirting it, or from leaving it again by another gate, on
his way to new pastures, and if he was going away from it that
meant nothing either, for slaughter^-houses are not confined to towns,
no, they are everywhere, the country is full of them, every butcher
has his slaughter^-house and the right to slaughter, according to his
needs ^lights. [0621] But whether it was he didn't understand, or didn't want to
reply, he din^dn't reply, but went on his way without a word, without