Beatrice and Virgil Read Online Free PDF Page B

stationed himself in front of the hole with a stick in his hand.
       After a very long time, a pink muzzle appeared, followed by the rest of the mouse. He hit it lightly with his stick and was astounded to see the small body lying there motionless. There was a drop of blood on the stone floor. He quickly wiped it up with his sleeve and threw the mouse outside, and said nothing to anyone.
      The next page contained another section that was brought to his attention:
       One morning as he was walking back along the rampart, he saw a fat pigeon basking in the sun on top of the battlement. Julian stopped to look at it. There was a breach at this place in the castle wall and his hand fell on a    broken piece of stone. He swung his arm and the stone hit the bird, which plummeted into the moat.
       He scrambled down after it, scratching himself on the underbrush, searching everywhere, more lively than a puppy.
       The pigeon, its wings broken, was suspended quivering in the branches of a privet bush.
       Its refusal to die irritated the child and he set about to wring its neck. The bird's convulsions made his heart beat faster, filling him with a wild, tumultuous joy. As the bird finally stiffened, he felt faint.
      That was the connection, then, in his reader's mind: animals, the killing of. Henry was not shocked. The animals in his novel were not sentimental caricatures. Though used for a literary purpose, they were wild animals, which he attempted to portray with exact behavioural accuracy, and wild animals kill and are killed in a routine way. He intended his story for adults and he allowed himself all the animal violence it required. So a mouse and a pigeon killed by a child exploring the limits of life, getting a feel for death--that was nothing to ruffle him.
      He turned the pages. Julian becomes a relentless hunter, with his reader's faithful highlighter as witness:
       ... preferred to hunt on his own, with his horse and his falcon... would soon fly back, tearing apart some bird...
       ... took herons, kites, crows and vultures in this way.
       ... loved to sound his horn and ride behind his dogs... the stag... as the dogs tore at its flesh...
       On misty days... go deep into a marsh... geese, otters and wild ducks.
       ... slew bears with a knife, bulls with a hatchet and wild boar with a spear...
       ... basset hounds... rabbits... rushed at them... broke their backs.
       ... a mountain peak... two wild goats... approached barefoot... plunged a dagger...
       ... lake... beaver... his arrow killed it...
      Then came a longer section that his reader had marked out:
       Then he entered an avenue of tall trees whose tops formed a kind of triumphal arch leading into the forest. A deer leapt out of a thicket, a buck appeared in a clearing, a badger emerged from a hole, a pheasant on the grass spread its tail, and when he had slain them all, more deer appeared, more bucks, more badgers, more pheasants, and blackbirds, jays, ferrets, foxes, hedgehogs, lynx, an infinite variety of animals, more numerous with each step he took. They circled around him, trembling, gazing at him with gentle, pleading eyes. But Julian had not tired of killing, and again and again he drew his crossbow, unsheathed his sword and thrust with his knife, thinking of nothing, remembering nothing. He lived only for the instant, a    hunter in an unreal landscape where time had lost all meaning and where everything was happening with dreamlike ease. An extraordinary sight stopped him short: a small valley shaped like an amphitheatre and filled with deer. The animals were huddled together, warming one another with their breath, which hung like a cloud in the surrounding mist.
       The prospect of such carnage left him breathless with joy for several minutes. He dismounted, rolled up his sleeves and started to shoot.
       At the whistling of the first arrow, all the stags turned their heads in unison. Gaps appeared in their