MANOEUVRES OF THE HARE CHASE, 
2or 
is swifter, the voices of the dogs sharper ; the hare adopts other 
tactics. It will not do now to stop fifty paces before the dogs, 
or to trot off before them, displaying its graces. With these there 
is no time to be lost in idle drollery. He must deploy his talents 
with all haste, and above all economize his means. The hare’s 
plan is already settled in his head. 
He will profit by his five hundred yards in advance of the dogs 
to play his fiist trick. On the other side of the little wood where 
he was started, and to which he has returned, lies a high road, 
much frequented on market-days, where the hare’s footprints will 
be effaced and his scent lost. 
He crosses it, he passes down a few moments, keeping well in 
the dust : he returns in his track so as better to conceal his route ; 
finally he leaves the road by a side leap, much below the place 
where he entered. The pack has already hieroglyphics to guess 
for full quarter of an hour. The hare will profit by this pause to 
take breath, and place himself at a proper distance to judge the 
effect first, well. Perhaps it might have succeeded well ; but, 
alas ! indiscreet tongues have revealed the tactics of the fugitive, 
and the place where he is concealed. Besides, one dog of brains, 
a griffon of Vendee, has not been cheated by all these subterfuges 
of going and coming, and has not quitted the true path a single 
second, and behold the whole pack now gathered about him ; there 
is nothing left for it but to run across the meadow. A cloud of 
dust rising yonder, happily announces the presence of a flock of 
sheep. There is still an opportunity to mix his track with that of 
all these beasts, and to slip into the midst of them, so as after- 
ward to escape unperceived by favor of the tumult, and to gain 
the neighboring hillock. Soon done as thought. Unfortunately 
every shepherd is somewhat of a poacher, and every sheep-dog 
somewhat of a hare-dog ; our beast has been perceived by the 
shepherd and his dogs, and there is an accent in the voice of the 
dog, who opens, which does not permit any mistake as to the 
sense of his words, and which every dog understands — the game 
is up a second time. Du Fouilloux relates having followed and 
caught in a sheep-fold, a hare, which he had not been able to 
chase from the midst of the flock. 
