I shall invite no one to be present at the exhumation.

Of those about me, only little Paul has the courage to assist me.
The Mole is a Mole no longer, but a greenish horror, putrid, hairless, shrunk into a round, greasy mass.

The thing must have undergone careful manipulation to be thus condensed into a small volume, like a fowl in the hands of the cook, and, above all, to be so completely deprived of its fur.

Is this culinary procedure undertaken in respect of the larvae, which might be incommoded by the fur?
Or is it just a casual result, a mere loss of hair due to putridity?
I am not certain.

But it is always the case that these exhumations, from first to last, have revealed the furry game furless and the feathered game featherless, except for the tail-feathers and the pinion-feathers of the wings.
Reptiles and fish, on the other hand, retain their scales.
Let us return to the unrecognizable thing which was once a Mole.