The pines exhaled their pungent, resinous, exhilarating odour.
The wolf lay under cover all day. His bed was bestrewn with decaying
foliage and overgrown with moss. He rested his head on his paws,
gazing solemnly before him with small tear-stained eyes; he lay there
motionless, feeling a great weariness and melancholy. Around him was
a thick cluster of firs overspread with snow.
Twice the old wolf raised his head, opened his jaws wide and gave a
bitter plaintive whine; then his eyes grew dim, their ferocity died
down, and he wagged his tail like a cub, striking a thick branch a
sharp blow with it. Then again he relapsed into melancholy
immobility.
At last, as the day declined, as the naming splendour of the dying
sun sailed majestically towards the west and sank beneath the horizon
in a glory of spilled violets and purples, and as the moon uprose, a
huge, glowing lantern of light, the old wolf for the first time
showed himself angry and restless. He emerged from his cover and
commenced a loud howling, fiercely bristling his hair; then he sat on
his hind-legs and whined as though in great pain, again, as if driven
wild by this agony, he began to scatter and gnaw at the snow. Finally
at a swift pace, and crouching, he fled into the fields, to the
neighbourhood of the farm near which the wolf-traps were laid.
Here it was dark and cold, the snow-wind rose afresh, harsh and
violent, and the crusted snow cut the animal's feet.
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