104 WOLF-HUNTING. 



own country on that side of Upper Brittany contiguous to La 

 Vendee, in former days the classic hunting-ground of the Bourbon 

 kings and the old noblesse of France. The little town was 

 already full to repletion ; and it was only by extraordinary shifts 

 and contrivances that night-lodging could be obtained for the 

 numerous guests ; for instance, Keryfan, giving up his room to 

 four of Kergoolas's friends, contented himself with a mattress on 

 the floor of mine, while St. Prix, to whom had been allotted the 

 state apartment at the Cheval Blanc, accommodated a like 

 number : the grooms, kennel-men, and even the valets, all to a 

 man, slept in the hay-lofts adjoining their respective stables. 

 Every night several of these men were more or less intoxicated j 

 and as they staggered about with a pipe perpetually alight in their 

 mouths, and often with a smouldering wood-ember, suspended 

 by a small wire tongs to their wrists, from which they borrowed 

 the fire, the wonder was that the whole town was not reduced 

 to a heap of ashes before the end of the week : as it happened, 

 however, the only casualty that occurred -befell a small outhouse, 

 in which one of M. de Kergoorlas's piqueurs, with three couple of 

 hounds, was quartered. The man had retired to his domicile in a 

 state of helpless intoxication, and, heedless of the live ember sus- 

 pended from his wrist, had cast himself upon the heap of straw in 

 company with the hounds. Fortunately the straw was somewhat 

 mouldy and damp, or he and the three couple of hounds would 

 speedily have been reduced to so many heaps of calcined bones. 

 The fire, however, gradually gained ground ; and at length burn- 

 ing some of the hounds, they set up such a wail as never was 

 heard in Gourin before. Kergoorlas, either suspecting the mis- 

 chief or recognising the tongue of his hounds, was the first to 

 reach the hovel ; and, bursting open the door, he seized the 

 recumbent piqueur by the leg, dragged him, still in a state of 

 unconsciousness, to a heap of manure hard by, and then, with 

 half-a-dozen peasants, soon extinguished the flames. A hound 



