White Snail.-
(Silence.)
(A young lady with a lace parasol comesalong counting her steps. Upon reaching a little brook, she
hesitates. Then she jumps.)
Black Snail.-
(Silence.)
(The rat has crossed the river. The badrat. The rat that devours the tender rootlets.)
White Snail.-
(Silence.)
(The young lady consults the scent ofthe fennel beds. The evening, lacking intelligent relations,
crumbles down into the haze of the horizon.)
Black Snail.-
(Silence.)
(The rat returns to the blackberrybushes. An obscure voice delights in pronouncing this
word: blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.)
White Snail.-
(Pause.)
(The young lady sits down on the greenhillside. She has come outside alone because she does not
recall the mice.)
Black Snail.-(Dumbstruck.)
(Silence.)
(In the watery cover, with nary a crease, a long cloudquivers in place. The rat heads for it like a bird. The Lord
must have consented to his inflicting this abuse.)
White Snail.-
(Silence.)
(No one likes the book the young lady is reading. She is silly,unaware that her mountains of sugar are full of ants.)
Black Snail.-
(Exit.)
White Snail.-(At the top of the fennel stalk.)
(Silence.)
Ay!
