132 WOLf-HUNTING. 



their noses their dismal serenade was unceasing, till, like Richard,. 

 he must have said : 



" Meth ought a legion of foul fiends 

 Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears 

 Such hideous cries, that with the very noise 

 I trembling wak'd . " 



Saving Shafto himself, and the sturdy Breton peasant, Owen 

 Mawr whose domicile was the stable-loft, and who, with his wife, 

 fulfilled in a wonderful way the various offices of cook, groom, 

 piqueur, and general purveyor no other human being lived at, 

 or within a league of the Hermitage. However, Shafto had 

 sundry advantages over the hero of Defoe's story, in his four- 

 roomed house ; two spare beds were always ready for visitors 

 during the hunting season ; and these were kept tolerably well 

 aired by kindred spirits, who, having once lodged there, were as 

 regular in their visits as woodcock in their migration ever afterwards. 

 When Frederick the Great furnished Voltaire's apartment for him 

 at Sans Souci, he humorously decorated the walls with pictorial 

 epigrams on the character and habits of that philosopher and 

 among others, the figure of a stork represented the regularity of 

 his visits to that favoured spot. But here, at the Hermitage, the 

 sole garniture of the panelled walls consisted of roe-deer and 

 stags' antlers; on the tines of which were suspended whips, 

 hunting-horns, spurs, rods, and fishing gear ; while the floors were 

 covered with skins of the wolf and the fox ; trophies of the chase 

 serving the purpose of a carpet, but more durable and far softer to 

 the tread than the finest Axminster ever manufactured. Then 

 each bed had its otter-skin coverlet, beneath which it was a luxury 

 to lie on a cold winter's night ; it was so warm, so soft, and withal 

 light as an eider-down quilt ; the French artists far surpassing ours 

 in their treatment of fur-skins. The grisly hide of the boar was 

 also turned to profitable account, and supplied a capital door-mat 

 to each apartment. 



