His hoofs pounded the grass like hammers, and
presently he began to gallop! Felicite turned around and threw
patches of grass in his eyes. He hung his head, shook his horns
and bellowed with fury. Madame Aubain and the children, huddled at
the end of the field, were trying to jump over the ditch. Felicite
continued to back before the bull, blinding him with dirt, while
she shouted to them to make haste.
Madame Aubain finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first
Virginia and then Paul into it, and though she stumbled several
times she managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of
it.
The bull had driven Felicite up against a fence; the foam from his
muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have
disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and
the huge animal, thwarted, paused.
For years, this occurrence was a topic of conversation in
Pont-l'Eveque. But Felicite took no credit to herself, and
probably never knew that she had been heroic.
Virginia occupied her thoughts solely, for the shock she had
sustained gave her a nervous affection, and the physician, M.
Poupart, prescribed the saltwater bathing at Trouville.
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