280 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
strokes of his wings, and clinching his claws in a supreme convul- 
sion of i^gony. How the death-stroke had been given, I alone 
could tell — it was a feint repeated from the famous combat of the 
Horatii and the Curatii. 
The fox had fled to make the bird pursuing him exhaust his 
force against the well-furred buckler of his croup. As soon as 
the bird, fatigued, had given up fighting, and had perched upon 
the back of the chair in the insolent posture of a careless victor, 
the cunning beast had turned his head, noticed the position and 
calculated the distance ; then darting forward with a terrible leap 
that no one had foreseen, that no one heard, he had grappled the 
sleepy hawk by the throat, and made his teeth meet at a single 
bite. It was the affair of one second. When the murderer was 
looked after, he was seen under the kitchen dresser, in the atti- 
tude of a complete stranger to the tragic scene that had just 
passed, prosaically occupied in saving the servants some work by 
licking the plates. 
As we were very strong about this time in the Yiri Romae,’’ • 
we baptized the hero of this adventure with the illustrious name 
of Horace. The unfortunate did not long enjoy our admiration 
and his own glory ; carried away by a strange hallucination which 
the sight of the first snow produced in him, he fled across the 
plains without taking the precaution first to get rid of an orna- 
mental collar with little bells, and perished some days after by 
the shot of a poacher. 
The fox makes war on all animals weaker than himself. He is 
the scourge of the poultry yard and of the rabbit warren ; he 
levies an enormous tribute on the race of the hare ; he attacks 
successful!}^ the fawns of the doe and the roebuck. In hard times 
he comes down to the mice and roots ; he is less dainty of grapes 
than has been said, but every thing he can steal from man has a 
special charm of flavor ; it is blessed bread, as the state function- 
aries say of their extra perquisites. 
The fox does not associate for theft with the rogues of his kind, 
he prefers- to work on his own account, and keep his windfalls for 
himself alone when the help of an accomplice is not indispensable 
to him. It is only for hunting, and especially for hare hunting, 
