WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 103 



the indignant reply ; " and, as to the beds, unless you brought the 

 fleas yourself, I'll undertake to say you'll not find a single flea in 

 them." 



" I fully believe you, madam," said he " for they are all 

 married, and have very large families." 



This brought the conversation at once to a climax the lady 

 flung out of the room in a rage, and the gentleman quitted the 

 apartments that very day ; nor was he troubled farther with 

 respect to the tenancy. 



Keryfan's experience of hunting-quarters, from the luxury of 

 Leamington to the bush-life of northern Africa, had warned him to 

 take certain precautions against the exigencies of this Gourin cam- 

 paign. A corner of his portmanteau, for instance, was fitted up 

 in the most convenient fashion, with small bottles of eau-de- 

 Cologne, spirits of camphor, and a pot of mollifying salve ; 

 added to which he had brought with him a mosquito net, the 

 gift of a friendly Bedouin, within the folds of which, saturated 

 as it had been in a decoction of cedar-wood, he was as safe from 

 the attacks of all vermin as the Elector of Saxony boasted himself 

 to be when shut up in the virgin fortress of Konigstein, and 

 Napoleon was in vain attempting to batter it from the opposite 

 heights of Lilienstein. Thus protected, Keryfan could laugh at 

 the foe that drove me and others to madness : but, careful as he 

 had been of himself, let me do him the justice to say, that self- 

 comfort in no wise contracted his views with respect to the 

 comfort of those around him. That pot of salve saved me 

 from a thousand pangs; and even the net, which had been 

 laced together through the middle, he divided into two parts ; 

 and giving one to me, I passed at once from Hades into Elysium, 

 and became, so far as my pests were concerned, as invulnerable 

 as Achilles after he had been dipped in the Stygian lake. 



By the invitation of the Count de Kergoolas, a large 

 additional party of chasseurs had arrived at Gourin from his 



