NO DIPLOMACY LIKE THE STRAIGHT LINE. 269 
their side, but he passed in a different direction ; and then how 
can relays be arranged at distances of eighteen miles ? What the 
world does not understand, the politicians least of all, is that the 
straight line is the ne plus ultra of skill and cunning in the chase 
as in all matters of diplomacy. If our embassadors were not what 
they are ; if they should resolve, some fine day, to throw their 
cards on the table, and to say frankly to the diplomatists of abso- 
lutist countries : This is what our country wants, neither more nor 
less, accept our proposition or reject it, we should soon see inter- 
national relations clear up, and bad faith yield to frankness and 
loyalty in the dealings of powers. 
But the diplomatists of all countries pride themselves on passing 
for deep ones ; they must play too fine a fox game, and thus they 
blind themselves. What ruins the stags and hares, which are very 
cunning animals, is this same game of who shall outwit. It is be- 
cause instead of taking a decided course, and abandoning the coun- 
try preoccupied by the enemy, they persist in treading the beaten 
roads, and in renewing manoeuvres whose secret is at last discov- 
ered. They would not be caught thus if they commenced by dis- 
tancing their aggressors like the wolf. 
I have cited the history of that illustrious seven-year buck of 
the forest of Chantilly, who set off for Ardennes every time he was 
started, one hundred miles at a stretch. He might still be alive had 
he not had to do with the late Prince of Conde, the last of the 
great hunters of France, who captured him by means of relays 
seventy-five miles from his cave. 
All wolves do not show themselves as good-natured as the one 
whose tactics I have here sketched. There are some who only de- 
cide on leaving their fortress after having crippled the boldest dogs 
of the pack. The echoes of the Valley of Cluny still repeat the mar- 
velous prowess of the sleuth-hound Brisefort, and the desperate re- 
sistance of the terrible wolf Cambronne, a four-footed Achilles and 
Hector, whose feud lasted four whole years, and concluded by a 
treaty of peace quite unique, so far as I know, in the annals of the 
chase. Brisefort and his party pledged themselves to respect in 
future as inviolable, the dwelling of Cambronne. Cambronne prom- 
ised in turn to respect the cattle of the country ; an exception of 
