466 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Marcu 24, 1906. 

“Ah, then there is that too, is there?” said my 
mother. , : 
“Yes, but I’m not afraid. I shall place him at 
a good distance from me, you may be sure of it.” 
“And you will load his gun for him?” 
“Ves, I will load his gun for him.” | 
“Very well, then, since you will have it so!” | 
Poor mother would have more correctly said, 
“Since he will have it!” . 
I have seen many of my desires accomplished, 
many vanities satisfied, many ambitions attained 
and even exceeded; but I doubt whether the 
realization of any desire, vanity or ambition has 
ever given me a joy like that caused me by those 
few words: “Very well, then, since you will 
have it.” 
Henceforth I had but one thought, and that was 
the expedition which was promised for the fol- 
lowing Sunday, provided Abbé Grégoire was sat- 
isfied with my work. 
You know how I did my ttranslations; I 
thought best not to make any change in my cus- 
toms. As for the composition exercises, I paid 
such attention to them that the Abbé declared 
that, if I went on as I was doing now, I should 
in less than a year be qualified to enter the sixth 
form in a Paris college. 
Furthermore, I learnt for my own satisfaction 
two or three hundred lines of Virgil. Bad Latin 
scholar as I am, I have always adored Virgil; 
that compassion for the wandering exiles, that 
solemn sadness of death, that intuition of the 
Unknown God, which are in him, have from the 
first supremely touched my heart; the melody of 
his verses, their facile scansion, had an especial 
charm for me, and sometimes still lull me in my 
moments of half-slumber. I knew by heart whole 
passages of the 4neid; aud even to-day I think 
I could repeat the story of A‘neas to Dido from 
beginning to end, incapable though I should be of 
construing a Latin sentence without making three 
or four barbarisms. 
The Sunday so much expected came at last. 
The usual sleepless night, the usual excitement 
in the morning, the usual eagerness for starting 
off. This day it was no mere mirror* business, 
but we shot straight and steady in front of us. 
The partridges got up at enormous distances— 
no matter! I kept blazing away—only, nothing 
fell. At last, on reaching the crest of one of those 
hills which, in our part of the country, are called 
larris, I surprised a pair of birds which got up 
within ordinary range. I fired at random, and 
one of the two partridges, hit at the extremity of 
its wing, showed by its slanting flight that it was 
wounded. 
“Touched!” called out M. Picot. 
I had seen fast enough that it was touched, and 
I had started after it. Not until I felt myself 
launched on the rapid slope did I realize my rash- 
ness. After twenty yards I was no longer de- 
scending—I was bounding; after thirty I bounded 
no more—I flew. Every moment I felt my equi- 
librium on the point of being lost; my speed 
kept increasing with the momentum of my body; 
I was a living application of Galileo’s square of 
distances. 
M. Picot saw me tumbling down without being 
able to stop me, in such headlong fashion was I 
impelled toward ‘a point where the hill was cut 
perpendicularly by the opening of a quarry. I 
could see the direction I was taking, while power- 
less to check myself. The wind had already car- 
ried off my cap. I flung away my gun, and 
reached the gap. Suddenly the ground went from 
under me. I leapt, or, more strictly, fell from a 
height of ten or twelve feet, and disappeared into 
the snow which the wind had, very fortunately, 
accumulated in such a way as to form a soft bed 
about three feet deep at the spot where I had 
fallen! 
I was horribly frightened, I confess. I thought 
I was killed! As I fell I closed my eyes, but re- 
opened them on perceiving that I was not hurt 
at all. The first object I caught sight of was the 
head of M. Picot’s dog, who was contemplating 
me from the point whence I had leapt, and at 
which she, more mistress of herself than I, had 
stopped short. 
“Diana,” I called; 
Find it!” 
*Alluding to the common method of attracting larks by 
means of a mirror.—Transl. 
“Diana, hi! good dog here. 

And, picking myself up, I resumed the chase 
after my partridge. 
In the distance I perceived M. Picot, who, 
mounted on a rock, was lifting his eyes to 
heaven. He had believed me smashed to atoms; 
I had not even a scratch. His figure produced 
in the landscape an effect which I shall never for- 
eu 
‘ I had lost sight of my partridge, but I knew 
whereabouts the bird had fallen. I brought Diana 
in this direction. Scarcely had she gone twenty 
yards when she got the scent, and started off to 
follow it at a gentle trot. 
“Let her go,” called out M. Picot to me, “let 
her go! She’s on it—she’s on it!” 
I paid no attention; I ran faster than the dog, 
and in front of her. Chance at last brought me 
to the partridge, which stood fair as a partridge 
does. 
“See, there she is,’ I cried out to M. Picot; 
“hil Diana, after it, good dog!” 
Diana saw the bird! it was time, for breath 
was failing me. I had still just strength enough 
to go on till the dog held the bird in her mouth. 
Flinging myself on her, I snatched it away—held 
it up by a leg for M. Picot to see it—and down 
I fell. Never did I feel myself so near giving up 
the ghost; never has my last breath been nearer 
my lips. Four steps more and my heart had 
burst. And all this for the sake of a partridge 
worth fifteen sous! How strange the value which 
passion gives to things! 
I nearly swooned away; but the nearer I felt 
myself to swooning the closer did I hug my 
partridge, with the result that I recovered con- 
sciousness without having let go of it for a single 
instant. 
M. Picot had now come up with me. He helped 
me to get up; and, as the partridge was still liv- 
ing, he knocked the back of its head on the barrel 
of his gun, and then thrust it into my bag, still 
quivering. 
Then I observed that I had neither gun nor 
cap, so I went to find my gun, while M. Picot sent 
Diana after my cap. 
Thus ended my sport for that day, and quite 
enough too, heaven be praised! 
Levaillant, after killing his first elephant on the 
banks of the Orange River, was not more happy 
than I. My triumph was complete. On re-enter- 
ing our house I found my brother-in-law, who 
was on his way from business. I showed him 
my partridge—it had already been introduced to 
half -the town. 
“What do you say to this?” I asked. 
“Well, I invite you for Sunday next to a battue 
at M. Moquet’s, at Brassoire.”’ 
I leapt with joy. These battues at M. Moquet’s 
had a reputation throughout the department; it 
was usual for them to kill forty or fifty hares. 
“Ah, mon Dieu!” murmured my mother, “that 
was just all he wanted.” 
This invitation from my brother-in-law—giving 
me, as it would do, an independent status—pos- 
sessed far more importance than appeared on the 
surface. The battue at Brassoire would be real 
sport with all the crack shots of the neighborhood 
—with M. Deviolaine above all, who, having been 
once my companion in shooting, and having fra- 
ternized with me in the open, could not hence- 
forth be my enemy in the forest. 
Virgil and Tacitus felt the effects of my joy. 
Abbé Grégoire was delighted with me, and put 
no obstacles in the way when M. Deviolaine’s 
trap stopped at our door to pick me up. It was 
Saturday evening. . The farmhouse of Brassoire, 
situated between the two forests of Villers-Cot- 
terets and Compiégne, is three and a half leagues 
from Villers-Cotterets, so we had to go and sleep 
there the night before, in order to begin the 
shooting early on the morrow. Oh, the forest, 
how glorious it seemed to me, although stripped 
of its leaves! I seemed to be taking possession 
of it as a conqueror. Had I not there at my side 
the viceroy of this forest, who treated me almost 
as a man, and that because I had gaiters, a pow- 
der flask and a gun! 
As we drove up, M. Moquet ran out to welcome 
us. He was one of those rich farmers, hospitable 
in the old-fashioned way, who, whenever he had 
in his house one of these big shooting parties; 
bringing together all the sportsmen of the neigh- 
borhood, would kill a pig, a calf and a sheep. 
Moreover, he was a shrewd, well-informed man, 
capable alike in theory and in practice, and re- 
puted to possess the finest merino sheep that 
could be found for twenty leagues round. 
A splendid supper awaited us. Needless to say 
that a sportsman who, like me, presented himself 
as a mere recruit, whose only credentials of ser- 
vice consisted in a total of six larks and one 
partridge, afforded an object to the raillery of the 
whole company—a raillery in which M. Moquet, 
in his capacity of host, had the good taste to take 
no part. But, as we got up from the table, he 
whispered to me: “Never mind, I will put you 
in good positions, and it won’t be my fault if to- 
poe evening you don’t have the laugh over 
them.” 
“Never fear,” I answered with that charming 
confidence which was habitual to me, “I shall do 
my best.” 
The next morning by 8 o’clock all the party 
had gathered together, and some thirty peasants 
formed a line by the main entrance of the farm. 
These were the beaters. 
The dogs howled piteously. They understood, 
poor animals, that in this kind of chase there was 
nothing for them to do, Not more than one or 
two of them were taken, and these picked out 
from the strongest legs of the pack, with the ob- 
ject of slipping them on a hare which might be 
wounded and attempt to reach the forest. They 
had, as a rule, a man specially to take charge of 
them, and, excepting for the brief moments when 
eed were slipped, they were kept rigorously in 
eash. 
The shooting was to begin just outside the 
farm. M. Moquet explained to the head beater 
the general plan of the day, while reserving for 
its own time the details of each particular battue. 
I was posted a hundred yards from the farm in 
a sandy hollow. Some children at play had 
scooped out a large hole in the sand, which M. 
Moquet pointed out to me, and told me to crouch 
down in it, declaring that, if I did not stir, the 
hares would come close enough to warm my feet. 
I had no great confidence in this position, How- 
ever, as M. Moquet was commander-in-chief of 
the expedition, there was nothing for me to say. 
So I let myself down into my hiding place, re- 
serving my liberty to leave it, by way of a sur- 
prise, should occasion offer. 
The beating began. At the first shouts of the 
beaters two or three hares started, and, after bal- 
ancing for a moment which road to follow, pro- 
ceeded—at unequal distances from one another, 
like the three Curiatii—to take the path leading 
to the hollow where I was. 
I confess that, when I saw them making as di- 
rectly toward me as if they had, in fact, made an 
appointment to meet me in the hole where I was 
hidden, a dizziness came over my eyes. Through 
the veil as it were thus spread between them and 
me I saw them swiftly advancing, and as they 
advanced my heart beat louder. Six degrees be- 
low zero, and the perspiration trickling down my 
forehead! At last the one who headed the col- 
umn seemed to have definitely made up his mind 
to charge me, and he came straight at me, Di- 
rectly he started I had my aim on him. I might 
have let him approach within twenty, ten, or five 
yards, but I had not the self-restraint; and at a 
distance of thirty yards about I let fire at him, 
aiming full in his face. 
The hare promptly executed a most significant 
turnabout, and commenced a series of truly fan- 
tastic capers. It was clear that I had hit him. 
Out of my lair I bounded like a jaguar, crying, 
“Here he is! I’ve got him! Let go the dogs!— 
Ah, you brigand—you rascal, you! One moment, 
that’s all!” 
The hare heard my voice, and only performed 
more extraordinary pranks than ever. As for his 
two companions, the one turned suddenly back 
and broke through the beaters; the other made 
up his mind to it, and passed by me so close, that, 
having now nothing in my gun, I flung the gun 
itself at him. 
But this incidental attack did not divert me 
from the main pursuit. I darted after my hare, 
who continued to indulge in the most wild and 
incoherent gymnastics, never making four steps 
in a straight line—jumping this way, jumping 
that way—bounding forward, bounding backward 
—haffling all my calculations, as my father had 
