Читать книгу Bertie, May and Mrs Fish - Xandra Bingley - Страница 7

It never harms to exaggerate in the direction of truth.

Henri Matisse, to an art student

Across the snowy hills some galloping horsemen are chasing a single horseman. He is beating his horse and racing away downhill to escape. He reaches flat white land and gallops on and on, looking over his shoulder, beating his horse. The others do not follow him away from the hills.

At last he arrives at a village exhausted and people crowd around him and exclaim, ‘You are safe … it is wonderful … we never believed you would get here.’ He says, ‘I can tell you I was afraid, they got close to me up in the hills.’

The people say, ‘No – no – you do not understand … it is a miracle … you have ridden across the lake … underneath the ice is water a mile deep.’

Then he dies. From fear of a danger he did not know he was in.

German fable