The Mares on the borders of which these scenes of strife and carnage take place, are found by the morning sun surrounded by a crimson circle, and all the horrid details of the battle-field proof that the weak have been slaughtered and overcome by the strong; a humiliating sight! for the desolation created by the bad passions of man is far too like it. Sometimes these Mares are from two to three hundred feet in circumference, and these may be truly termed the diamonds of the forest. The Mare N., fed by small but always flowing springs, is full, when others are dried up, and is frequented by troops of animals, savage and meek, which thirst and heat drive there from all points of the compass. These Mares, but little known, few in number, much sought after become, more especially at the period of the dog-days, very difficult to find. Considered always as the property of the first comer, the poacher, who is better acquainted than any other sportsman with the localities in which they are to be found, generally takes up his quarters near them late at night, and installs himself; sleeps there, sups there, and, determined not to leave it under any pretext, laughs in the face of the unfortunate wight who arrives after him, in the happy delusion that he has anticipated every one else. For it is a forest law, and acknowledged by all, that two sportsmen cannot, without disturbing one another, sit down at the same Mare; possession is in this not only nine but ten points of the law; and, if a mere lad, with a fowling-piece, happens to place himself first on its banks, no giant seven feet high would think of using his superior strength to expel him.

Such is the law such is the custom to act in defiance of it would expose the culprit to the chance of receiving a charge of N in his jacket; and as each Mare has its wooden hut, in successive summers, constructed by you, embellished by me, knocked in, cut about, injured by some one else, and repaired by all the first man who puts the stock of his gun on the floor of the cabin becomes immediately and incontestibly the lucky proprietor of it for that night.

And how shall I explain to you the thousand cunning tricks, the diabolical, the ingenious finesses, the Philipistic and Machiavellian diplomacy, which sportsmen employ one towards the other to obtain possession? Two friends, for instance, meet by accident on the same road; with what perfect and impudent lies do they entertain each other! with what gusto do they try and take one another in! what cheating doubts do they not mutually endeavour to raise, in their desire to induce each other to take the wrong road! With the effrontery of a diplomate, with the assurance of a secretary of legation, one affirms, his hand on his heart, and looking towards heaven, that he is going to the left, when it is his positive intention, well-considered beforehand, to go to the right. No, France and England, Bresson and Bulwer, playing their game of chess of the Spanish marriages on the green cloth of political rascality, never said anything comparable to the devices of these lying chevaliers of the forest.

Everything is permitted every stratagem is fair, so long as either is endeavouring to triumph over his adversary; and then, when they have gone so far as to be able to wish one another good afternoon, and each has convinced himself that he has put the other on the wrong road that, thank the stars, his rival is off, that he is far off, that he cannot see him what haste! what strides and leaps to get speedily to the spot, and make himself safe! The running of the celebrated Greek, who, with his breast laid open by a ghastly wound, ran eighty miles in ten hours to announce to the impatient Athenians the victory of Marathon, was the pace of a tortoise compared with the demon-racing of these chasseurs.

And, after all this anxiety and rapid locomotion, after turning and winding in and out of the wood, and round the wood to avoid the open across the brook to avoid the bridge through the brambles and thick underwood to avoid the open path when you think you have cheated, or, at any rate, distanced your enemy, when you perceive in front of you the object of your hopes, the well-known and much-desired hut which seems to invite you to repose after your long day’s walk why, at that interesting moment, even your own, your very own brother would be a veritable Bedouin in your eyes, a man to be put out of the way any how, if he attempted to stop you.

At such a crisis, if a real sportsman were to hear that his house was on fire, that his banker was off to America, taking with him his wife and his money, he would not, I say, in such a moment turn his head round to see which way they went; Imagine, then, when in order to succeed you have made yourself out a cheat of the first water, and employed every possible subterfuge, conceive what would be the extent of your anger and indignation, what your disgust, when on arriving at your coveted Mare, at your oasis, at your paradise, at the spot for which you have toiled and invented such lies, to find the hut occupied!

Sometimes you may find in the possessor a chasseur, who likes to amuse himself at your expense, a jocose fellow, who, hearing you at a distance working your way through the underwood, and seeing you through the leaves advancing with eager and rapid steps to the spot, conceals himself behind the entrance, and as you are just on the point of entering the hut, your foot just on the step, the droll sportsman puts his ugly head out of the window, as a yellow tortoise would his out of his shell, asking you, in most polite terms, what o’clock it is; or if it should chance to be raining a deluge at the time, remark in compassionate accents, “Why, sir, you seem rather damp!”

Job was never so unfortunate as to arrive at a Mare already occupied; had he done so, it is not by any means clear to me that he would have been able to contain his wrath. For my own part, I have frequently been beside myself with vexation, and on one occasion was very nearly having a quarrel to the death with my best friend. We had accidentally met in the forest, as described, and had deceived each other, as two Greeks of Pera would, when making a bargain. After our rencontre, my friend went to the right, I to the left; he on the sly, turning and twisting by footpath and wood to conceal himself from observation; I, on the contrary, went directly to the spot, and striding away as fast as I could go, arrived at the Mare about three minutes before him, scarlet and streaming with exertion, and quite out of breath. My friend who was equally heated, but, in addition, disappointed and in a furious rage, addressed me in most insulting language, declaring between the hiccup, which his want of breath and want of coolness had produced, that I was a Jesuit, a hypocrite; and many other affectionate epithets did he apply to me with the utmost volubility.

If I had not been the fortunate occupant of the hut, which gratifying fact was as honey to my lips and oil to my bones, and had a most soothing influence on my temper, I should naturally have revolted at such conduct; but this constrained me, and I remained perfectly quiet, determined to allow my lungs to regain their composure before I replied. Seeing this, his rage increased tenfold, and he proposed a duel with our fowling-pieces, hunting-knives, or two large sticks; he offered me, also, an aquatic duel of a most novel character, namely, for both of us to undress and endeavour to drown each other in the Mare! In short, he continued for at least a quarter of an hour to rave and rail without ceasing.

But of all this abuse I took not the slightest notice, remaining perfectly calm, sitting in my hut like Solomon on his throne, and fanning my heated countenance with the brim of my broad hat, as if I had been in a glass-house. It is true I laughed in my sleeve, looked vacantly at the blue heavens, and whistled the chorus or snatches of a hunting song. Finding therefore, it was impossible to move me, my adversary finished by getting tired of roaring and abusing; and having rubbed the perspiration from his distorted face with a force which seemed as if he would rub his nose off, he turned on his heel with the grace of a wild boar that had received a brace of balls in his haunches, looking me fiercely in the face, and pouring forth as a last broadside, a dozen of oaths in the true argot style, which seemed to dry up the very plants near him, and silenced the frogs that were croaking in the Mare.

Such, however, is the force of habit and of this rule; and so truly does every one feel that on the strict observance of it depends the tranquillity of all, that the law of first possession is never violated; although it is but simply acknowledged by the justice and good sense of every sportsman, it is quite as well established in their manners and customs as if it were written on tables of iron. The consequence is, that however enraged a person may be, he sees, and generally at the outset, that his best course is to give way; he may fume and strut, look big and villify, but he bows his head and is off with as embarrassed a face as yours, gentle reader, would certainly be, if a friend whom you knew to be ruined came and asked you to lend him twenty thousand francs.

But also, by St. Hubert, if you remain the lord and master of this Mare, how your heart leaps, how all fatigue is forgotten! and when the twilight approaches, what a fever there is in your veins! what anxiety! I have heard of the delirious and suffocating emotions of a lover waiting for his mistress at the rendezvous. Fiddlesticks! I say, gruel and iced-water. The most volcanic Romeo that ever penned a letter or scaled a wall, is to the sportsman waiting amidst the howling storm on a dark night for the wolves, what a cup of cream is to a bottle of vitriol. As for myself, I would give, yes, ladies, I am wolf enough to say, that I would willingly give up the delightful emotions of ninety rendezvous, with the loveliest women in the world, black or white, for twelve with a boar or a wolf. In return for this bad taste, I shall probably be devoured some day or other, a fate no doubt duly merited.

I will suppose, therefore, that the sportsman is squatting quietly in his hut, like a serpent in a bush. With what ardour and nervous anxiety does he not await the propitious and long-expected hour! He throws open the ivory doors of his castle in the air, his hopes are multiplied a thousandfold. What shall I shoot? what shall I not shoot? Will it be a she-wolf, or a roebuck? No, I prefer a boar. Will he be a large one? But if by chance I should kill a sow? what a capital affair that would be; the young ones never leave their mother; perhaps I should bag three or four, perhaps the whole fare. But then, how shall I carry them off? Perhaps the wolves will save me the difficulty of contriving that, and dispute my title to them, perhaps they will attack me, eat me, the sow, the pigs, and my sealskin cap.

How, I beseech you, is the following monologue to stand comparison with the fierce excitement of such anticipations? Will she come this evening, the darling will my sweetest be able to come? shall I be blessed with one kiss? shall it be on the left cheek or the right, or shall I press her lips to mine? Bah! there can be no comparison in the hunter’s mind; and then you barricade yourself in your hut as evening approaches, strengthen the weak points, study the best positions, look to your arms; the day seems as if it would never close, nothing is left for you to do but to muse in the interval, and think of the poor maudlin lovers, who at this very hour are squatting under a wall like so many young apes; or of him who, half concealed, stands on the watch at the angle of a dirty street, waiting with a fluttering heart the arrival of some sentimental little chit of a girl, who is nevertheless coquette enough to keep him waiting for half an hour. And again, with what disdain and contempt you regard such birds as pigeons, turtle-doves, buzzards, wild duck, and teal; hares and foxes, too, which make their appearance from time to time, to kill these never enters your head.

What, not the fox, with his splendid bushy tail?

Why what do you take me for, good reader? what can I possibly want with that? I, who am about to knock over two roebucks and three wolves? Peace, peace, my friends; skip and skuttle about, young rabbits; nibble away, middle-aged hares, don’t put yourselves the least out of the way, you won’t have any of my powder. Besides, to fire would be very imprudent, and to a great extent compromise the sport; for at this period the sun is sinking, the shadows are slowly lengthening, the roebuck are on their way, and the she wolf in the neighbouring thicket is raising her head and listening for the sounds which indicate that her prey is not far off. And you listen also to catch the slightest noise that comes on the wind, for each and all are a vocabulary to the huntsman, a gust of wind, the note of a bird disturbed, a weasel running across the path, a squirrel gnawing the bark, a breaking branch, startles you, circulates your blood, and puts you anxiously alive to what may follow. Everything that surrounds you at this still tour of twilight courts your attention, the waving branches speak to you, the hazel thicket, bending to the weight of some advancing animal, puts you on your guard; the heart beats, not for the rustling of a silk gown, nor for the hurried footfall of woman treading with fairy lightness on the fallen leaves. The syren voice is not about to whisper softly in your ear, “Are you there, violet of my heart!” nor are you about to reply, “Angelic being, moss-rose of my soul, let me press your sweet lips?” What you are waiting for are the wild beasts of the forest, you are listening for their distant and subdued tones, their bounding spring, their near approach, their bodies as a mark for your rifle, their yells, and cries, and death agony for your triumph.

Then the inexplicable charms of danger excite the sportsman’s feelings; his physical faculties, like those of the Indian, are doubled; he grasps his rifle with a firmer clutch, and looks down the blade of his hunting-knife with anxiety and yet with satisfaction. It grows dark, but his eyes pierce the gloom his life is at stake, but he forgets that it is so; for the love of the chase, the wild pleasures of the huntsman, have taken possession of his soul. Breathless, his heart thumping against his chest, as if it would break its bounds, he listens, the cloudy curtain rises, and with it the moon; the roebucks are heard in the distance, then the stealthy steps of the wolves, afterwards the rush of the boar: and now, gentlemen, the tragedy is about to commence choose your victims.