28 November — Protectors of Poachers. 



that the lawyers and magistrates have — private feel- 

 ings of the tenderest regard for the clever and ad- 

 venturous men who supply the greatest delicacies of 

 their tables. Some sportsmen heard that a great game 

 dinner was being cooked at a certain restaurant, and 

 they required the Procureur Imperial to give a warrant 

 for seizure. Armed with this and accompanied by the 

 police, they entered the kitchen where the prepara- 

 tions were busily going forward. On the spits before 

 the fire were quails, partridges, pheasants — evidence 

 enough against the master of the establishment ; but 

 he simply answered that, although the dinner might 

 not be legal, for the game was not killed in season, 

 still it would be useless to prosecute him, because the 

 feast had been ordered by the President of the Assizes 

 himself. The zeal of the trouble-fete sportsmen cooled 

 at once on receiving this piece of information, and they 

 desisted. The plain truth is, that conscientiousness in 

 game-preserving is almost entirely unknown in France, 

 and the only people who desire a different state of 

 things are the large land-owners, who are not power- 

 ful enough to alter the habits of the whole nation. 

 Every town of importance enough for the interchange 

 of hospitality is sure to maintain a good many isolated 

 braconniers, who supply its larders with game both in 

 and out of what may be legally the season. They are 

 less what an Englishman understands by the word 

 poacher, than hunters and trappers by profession, like 

 their brethren in the forests of America. There is still 

 great variety of game in France, and no country could 



