CHAPTER X

Trapping larks--I wax strong in the matter of my compositions--The wounded partridge--I take the consequences whatever they are--The farm at Brassoire--M. Deviolaine's sally at the accouchement of his wife.

I wonder what learned ornithologist first discovered the vanity of larks? What profound philosopher guessed that by means of moving surfaces of bright metal or of glass larks would come and look at themselves, provided the surfaces shone, and the brighter the surface the more freely and quickly would they be attracted?

This delight in looking at themselves cost the life of twenty larks, and I was the executioner of six.

I fired quite thirty times in achieving this result, but M. Picot assured me that it was very good for a beginner and that I was a hopeful pupil.

M. Picot never attempted to take the trouble to load my gun, and no accident befell me.

When we came to the first houses on our return home, I left M. Picot; I was most anxious to go through the town with my gun under my arm and the larks round my neck.

No Pompey or Cæsar entered Rome with more triumphant pride than I felt.

But, alas! everything decays in this world, joy, grief, and even vanity! A time came when, like Cæsar, I gave up my triumphs to my lieutenants.

One thought and one only used to fill my mind: and that was the promised shooting for the following Sunday, if the Abbé Grégoire was satisfied with me.

We know how my translations were done; I did not think it wise to change my practices; but I paid so much attention to my compositions that the abbé declared that if I went on so well, I should, in a year's time, be able to enter the sixth form of any Parisian college.

I also learned, for my own satisfaction, two or three hundred lines of Virgil. Although I was very bad at Latin, I have always loved Virgil. His pity for exiles, his melancholy consciousness of death, his feeling after an unknown God, completely won me from the very first; the music of his verse and its metrical ease delighted me extremely, and often lulls me to sleep even now. I knew long passages of the _Æneid_ by heart, and I believe I could still repeat from beginning to end Æneas's narration to Dido, though I could not construe a Latin sentence without making three or four grammatical errors.

The longed-for Sunday came at last! Again I spent a sleepless night, again I went through the same emotion in the morning, again I felt the same excitement at setting off. This time we did not use the mirror, but simply shot right and left; the partridges seemed to fly off to tremendous distances. No matter! I went on firing all the same; only, I hit nothing. But when we reached the crest of one of the high hills (called in our parts _larris_) I surprised a covey of young partridges, which rose within gun-shot. I fired off my gun at haphazard: one of the two partridges flew as far as it could, but by the angle of its downward flight I saw that it was wounded.

"Hit!" cried M. Picot.

I had, of course, seen that it was hit, and I set off after it.

Only when I felt myself rushing down the steep slope did I realise my rashness. When I had gone about twenty steps I was not running, I was leaping down; at the end of thirty I was no longer leaping, I was flying, and I felt I should lose my balance any moment; my speed increased in proportion to my weight; I became a living example of Galileo's squares of distances. M. Picot saw my break-neck pace, but was unable to save me, although I was rushing down headlong towards a spot where the mountain was cut into perpendicularly by a quarry-opening. I myself could see the direction in which I was going without being able to stop myself. The wind had already carried my cap away; I threw down my gun as I reached the open space. Suddenly the ground gave way from under me, I leapt or rather I fell a distance of ten or a dozen feet, and I disappeared in the snow, which happily the wind had collected in a soft eider-down quilt about a yard deep where I fell!

I was dreadfully frightened, I must confess; I thought my last hour had come. I shut my eyes as I fell; and, when I felt I was none the worse, I re-opened them; the first thing I saw was the head of M. Picot's dog looking over at me from the place where I had jumped, and where, more mistress of herself than I had been, she had pulled up.

"Diane," I cried, "Diane, here! look, look!"

And, getting up, I pursued my race after my partridge.

I saw M. Picot some distance away, standing up on the top of a rock, his arms raised to the heavens; he thought I had been smashed to atoms. I hadn't even a scratch.

He made such a figure against the landscape as I shall never forget.

I had lost sight of my bird, but I knew in what direction she had fallen, and I set off Diane on her track; she had hardly gone twenty yards before she found the scent, and started on it at a steady trot.

"Let her go," cried M. Picot; "let her go: she sees it again, she sees it."

I took no notice; I ran faster than she did, and before her. Finally chance led me to the partridge, which began to run.

"There it is," I cried to M. Picot,--"there it is! Diane, Diane! see, see, see, see, see!"

Diane saw it; and just in time, for my breath was beginning to fail me. I only had strength left to get to where she held it in her mouth: I pounced upon her, I snatched it from her, I lifted it up by a claw to show it to M. Picot and then I fell down.

I never felt so near dying or my last breath so close to my lips as then; four steps more, and my heart would have burst.

And all this for a partridge worth fifteen sous!

What a strange value passion puts upon things!

I very nearly fainted; but, the fainter I grew, the tighter did I squeeze the partridge to me, so that when I returned to consciousness I had never dropped hold of it for a single second.

M. Picot came up to me and helped me to rise. The partridge was still alive, so he knocked the back of its head on the butt of his gun and stuffed it in my bag, still fluttering in its death agony.

I turned the bag round so that I could gaze through the net and watch the poor creature's end.

Then I discovered that I had neither gun nor cap.

I began to search for my gun, and M. Picot sent Diane after my cap.

And that was the end of my hunting for that day. It was quite enough, thank goodness!

Levaillant could not have been happier than I was, after he had killed his first elephant on the banks of the Orange River.

My triumph was complete, for when I re-entered the house I found my brother-in-law just back from a tour of inspection.

I showed him my partridge, which had already made the acquaintance of half the town.

He made with the tip of his finger a cross on my forehead with my victim's blood.

"In the name of St. Hubert," he said, "I baptize thee a sportsman; and now that you are baptized--"

"What then?" I asked.

"Well, I invite you for next Sunday to a battue with M. Moquet of Brassoire."

I leapt for joy, for M. Moquet's battues were renowned throughout the department.

As many as forty or fifty hares were shot at a time.

"Oh! my child," murmured my mother,--"there is nothing he will like better!"

Besides making me feel my own master, this invitation of my brother-in-law was of far greater importance than it looked to be at the first glance.

The battue at Brassoire was really a shooting party, at which all the best guns in the district were present, M. Deviolaine above all, who, if he were once my shooting companion, and fraternised with me on the plain, would no longer be my enemy in the forest.

Virgil and Tacitus owed much to this invitation; the abbé was delighted with me, and he made no objection when M. Deviolaine's hunting carriole stopped in front of our door and I climbed in.

This was on Saturday evening: the farm of Brassoire is situated between the two forests of Villers-Cotterets and Compiègne, and is three and a half leagues from Villers-Cotterets, so we had to sleep there the night before, in order to begin shooting at daybreak.

Oh! how beautiful the forest seemed to me although it was leafless! I felt as though I took possession of it, as a conqueror. Had I not by my side the viceroy of the forest, who treated me almost as though I were a grown man, because I had gaiters on, a powder horn, and a gun?

M. Deviolaine still swore a great deal, but I thought his oaths delightful and full of spirit; I wished to swear as he did.

A month or two previously his family had been increased by the arrival of a little daughter. After a lapse of thirteen or fourteen years, it had occurred to his wife to make him this present.

M. Deviolaine had accepted it, grumbling, as he accepted everything. His eccentricity was made public by one of his queer sallies, which were peculiar to himself. Although the new arrival was no bigger than a radish at its arrival in this world, its mother had cried out a great deal in bringing it forth.

M. Deviolaine had heard the cries in his study; but as, with all his apparent brutality, he could not bear to see a pigeon suffer, he kept well out of the way, till the cries had ceased. When the cries were over, he listened with more unconcern to other noises; he heard steps on the stairs; his study door opened, and the cook appeared on the threshold.

"Well, Joséphine?" asked M. Deviolaine.

"Well, monsieur, it is all over. Madame has been delivered."

"Satisfactorily?"

"Satisfactorily."

"What is it?"

"A girl."

M. Deviolaine made a most significant groan.

"Oh! but," Joséphine made haste to add, "so pretty--as beautiful as the Cupids. She is the very image of Monsieur."

"In that case," growled M. Deviolaine, "she won't marry easily: the very image of me, so much the worse! so much the worse, good Heaven! So much the worse! I shall never have another!"

And he took his way to his wife's room.

My mother and I were there; Madame Deviolaine was in her bed, and a charming little pink and white baby girl, who, as Madame Davesne, is to-day one of the prettiest women in Paris, was awaiting M. Deviolaine's visit, dressed in swaddling clothes trimmed with lace.

He came in, with his head hutched on his shoulders, his hands in his pockets, looked round him, studied the topography of the room, and walked straight to the cradle, where he inspected the little occupant, puckering his great black eyebrows into frowns.

Then, turning to his wife, he said:

"Was it over that embryo you made so much racket, Madame Deviolaine?"

"Why, of course," she answered.

"Pooh!" said M. Deviolaine, shrugging his shoulders: "I can do better than that myself when I am not suffering from indigestion. Good-day, Madame Dumas; good-day, snotty," and, turning on his heels, he went out as he had entered.

"Thanks, Monsieur Deviolaine," said his wife. "Ah! I will take good care this shall be the last."

Madame Deviolaine has kept her word.

Ah! sweet, pretty Louise, see how you were treated on the day of your birth: but you took your revenge in remaining tiny and charming, and the last time I saw you you were as charming and sweet as ever.