WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 119 



When the bristles from the last pig killed were extracted from his 

 neck (a process immediately undertaken by some Cordonnier 

 peasant, if he is not interfered with), the difference in size and 

 strength between them and the bristles of the "solitaire" was quite 

 remarkable; the latter being more like wire-rods than the growth of 

 a pig's back; long, strong, and stiff as an awl the very requirement 

 adapted for the cobbler's use. No wonder then that these con- 

 noisseurs pounced with such avidity on so tempting a prize ; nor 

 that their discomfiture was expressed in bitter terms, when Louis 

 Trefarreg prevented them, as he sometimes did, from indulging in 

 this spoil. A fight, St. Prix told me, had more than once 

 occurred between the piqueur and the spoiler over a dead 

 boar ; but that, in every instance, Louis had proved himself 

 the better man. On the present occasion our pastime was 

 undisturbed by the semblance of a broil ; on the contrary, while 

 the " mort" was being sounded, and the usual obsequies duly 

 enacted over the fallen prey, every bristle was extracted from its 

 neck ; and, in the absence of the gendarmes, not one of whom 

 intruded on the scene, all went smoothly and merrily as a mar- 

 riage bell. 



It has been already remarked that our Gallic neighbours, pre- 

 vious to the business of entering on the chasse, are the most deli- 

 berative of human beings ; and now, even with the game afoot 

 and before them, much useful time was wasted in deciding how 

 the pursuit of the two other pigs should be continued ; one party 

 deeming it best to clap on the hounds at once from the river, 

 and to stick to the line of scent ; the other preferring to lift the 

 pack and throw them into a thick scrub-cover, about a league 

 off, into which it was pretty certain the pigs had gone. St. Prix 

 and his piqueur stoutly advocated the latter plan, explaining 

 how it would rest the hounds and tell against the game; but 

 " music won the cause," Kergoorlas deciding that, if the hounds 



