Centaurs

Introduction

"The Centaurs’ Cave" by George Barbier is an illustration from Poèmes en prose (1928) by Maurice de Guérin. It was shared by the wonderful Enchanted Booklet on Facebook here:

The music is "Centaur" by Brian Metolius

Centaurs

The last two centaurs looked at the stars in their secret sanctuary, the blue cave on the slopes of Mount Pelian. Chiron showed Carystus where his brothers and sisters had gone. They were now stars in the heavens.

Centaurs had been loved and respected by humanity and teachers and healers, but were admired by women ( and some men) who loved to boast that they had ridden a centaur.

Some men became jealous of the centaurs and started to hunt them, cutting off their cloven hooves and wearing them as hunting trophies.

Women still preferred the centaurs, so men said they would kill every last centaur.

Now Chion and Carystus were the last centaurs left in the whole world, but men were kept from their cave by a magical fog, but they had to leave to get food and water, and sooner or later they knew that they too would fall prey to the vicious hunters.