CHAPTER I 



PRINCE AND PEASANT, PEER AND PHEASANT 



No ; he has not the poetry of the partridge, nor the 

 romance of the grouse. He is a fowl, a barn-door 

 fowl ! — a tame polygamous foreign bird, that, like the 

 Cochin-China or the Guinea, can be tended by an old 

 woman or caught by a boy. Those who shoot him 

 perform no feat ; they are not sportsmen — only speci- 

 mens of the decadent aristocracy or inflated pluto- 

 cracy of England ; the 'battue' is a foreign horror, 

 the shooter no longer an English gentleman, but a 

 Parisian ' gommeux.' The bird, if he can fly so far 

 as to deserve the name, is but a stranger from the 

 southern Palsearctic region, imported like the rich 

 stuffs which screen the entrance to my lady's boudoir, 

 to add another false note to the discord of modern 

 civilisation ; fatted on the products of the honest 

 farmer's toil to swell the banquet of a prince or 

 grace the orgie of an Anonyma. 



Here is no sound food, like chicory or margarine, 



