WILD SPORT IN BRITTANY. 203 



nothing surprised me more, considering the damage they had 

 sustained by the pigs, and the real treat fresh meat must have 

 been to them, than the orderly and modest conduct of the 

 peasants on every occasion when the boar was cut up and 

 divided amongst them. This business was always managed under 

 the direction of the Louvetier, M. de St. Prix, who, as before 

 stated, exercised a paramount influence over the peasantry through- 

 out the district of Cornouaille. His word was their law; and if 

 at the right time a blow had been struck in favour of the Legiti- 

 mate claim to the throne of France, I verily believe he could have 

 brought every man of that country to the field, one and all at his 

 back, in support of his own views and the old Bourbon blood. 

 But St. Prix loved hunting better than politics, and far preferred 

 the sound of his own sylvan horn to the fiercer clang of the 

 martial trumpet ; though, if his king had called on him, he would 

 have gone to the front like a man, and then other and abler 

 pens would probably have recorded his glory in fields more 

 sanguinary but less joyous than those of a Brittany forest. Mine 

 be the simpler task of telling how gallant his bearing, and how 

 skilful his tactics ever were in all matters pertaining to the manly 

 chase. 



The great size of the boar, seeing he was not a solitaire, 

 appeared to astonish the peasants not a little, for it is a most 

 unusual event to find an old male tusker, of a certain weight and 

 age, in company with another pig. But St. Prix's success, as we 

 afterwards found, revealed the secret. That other pig, his com- 

 panion, was a young sow, full-grown, but lean and long-legged as 

 a greyhound, and fit to go for her life. The old gentleman had 

 evidently stuck to his mate so long as his wind would permit 

 him ; but that failing him, he turned short, and so let in a few 

 of the tail-hounds and Kergoorlas's lot, which, throwing fresh 

 strength into the struggle, soon brought him to bay and then 

 to bite the dust, under the couteau that struck him to the heart. 



