CHAPTER XI

M. Moquet de Brassoire--The ambuscade--Three hares charge me--What prevents me from being the king of the battue--Because I did not take the bull by the horns, I just escape being disembowelled by it--Sabine and her puppies.

I ask pardon for this digression, although it leads us to Brassoire.

At the sound of our carriage wheels M. Moquet ran out to welcome us. He was one of those wealthy landowners of the old-fashioned school of hospitality, who when he entertained a large shooting party invited all the sportsmen in the district, and killed a pig, a calf, and a sheep for their delectation. He was, besides, a clever, cultivated man, both in theory and in practice, and was noted for possessing the finest merino sheep for twenty leagues round.

A splendid supper was prepared for us. I being, as it were, a raw conscript in the hunting-field, with only six larks and a partridge as the trophies of my term of service, was, of course, the butt of the jokes of the whole party--jokes in which M. Moquet, as my host, had the good manners not to take any part. Furthermore, when he rose from the table, he whispered to me:

"Never mind, I will put you in some good places, and it won't be my fault if you don't turn the tables on them to-morrow evening."

"You may be sure," I replied, with that naïve self-confidence which never deserted me, "I will do my best."

Next morning at eight o'clock all the shooters gathered together, and a score and a half of peasants from the countryside collected round the great door of the farmhouse.

These were the beaters.

The dogs were howling piteously; they, poor beasts, quite understood they had no part in this sort of shooting party.

One or two might perhaps be chosen from amongst the roughest of the retrievers, to send after a wounded hare which seemed about to escape into the forest, but that would be all.

These dogs usually had a man specially kept to look after them, and, except for the brief times when they were let loose, they were kept rigidly leashed.

The shooting began on leaving the farm. M. Moquet explained the general plan for the day to the head gamekeeper, deferring until later to tell him the particular plan of each battue.

I was placed a hundred paces from the farm in a sandy ravine where some children had dug a great hole in the sand when playing. M. Moquet pointed this hole out to me, and told me to crouch in it, assuring me that, if I did not stir, the hares would come towards me hot-foot.

I did not feel much confidence in the spot, but, as M. Moquet was commander-in-chief of the expedition, there was nothing to be said in the matter. I subsided into my hiding-place, determined to rush out into the open when occasion offered.

Then the driving began. At the first shouts uttered by the beaters, two or three hares rose, and, sitting up for a moment to see what course to take, began to make for my ravine at uneven distances from one another.

I declare that when I saw them coming as straight as they could in my direction, making a rendezvous of the hole where I was hiding, a mist came over my eyes. Through this veil, which spread between the hares and me, I could see them advancing rapidly; and, the nearer they came, the louder did my heart beat. Although the thermometer stood six degrees below zero, perspiration ran down my face. The hare that headed the column seemed determined to charge straight at me. I had taken aim at it the moment it started; I ought to have let it approach within twenty or ten or five paces; but I had not the strength: when it was within about thirty paces, I fired full in its face.

It turned head to tail in a significant way, and began a series of most remarkable contortions. It was evidently hit.

I bounded out of my hole like a jaguar, shouting:

"Here it is! I have got it! Slip the dogs, you rogue, you scoundrel, ... wait, wait!"

The hare heard me, and made the wildest gyrations; of its two companions, one turned back on its tracks and took the beaters by storm, the other continued in its course and passed so close to me that, my gun being empty, I flung it at her.

But this incidental hostility had not turned me from the principal pursuit. I rushed upon my hare, which was still performing the most incoherent and extravagant gymnastics, not advancing four steps in any straight line; it leapt from side to side; then bounded forwards, next backwards; deceiving all my calculations, as my father had deceived those of his crocodile, by running to right and then to left; it escaped just as I thought I had got hold of it; it gained ten steps on me as though it hadn't a scratch on it; then it suddenly doubled back, and ran between my legs--one would have said as though for a wager. I did not shout this time; I simply yelled; I picked up stones and threw them at it. When I believed I was just on it, I fell flat on my stomach, hoping to crush it between my body and the earth as in a trap. In the distance I could see through a sort of haze the other shooters, half laughing, half furious; laughing at the exercise I was giving myself, furious at the noise and stir I was causing in the centre of the battue, which was turning back all the hares. At last, after unprecedented efforts, I caught mine by one paw, then by both, then round its body: it uttered despairing cries, and I held it against my breast, as Hercules held Antæus, and I went back to my hole, taking care to pick up my gun, as I passed it, where I had thrown it down.

When I returned to my quarters I examined my hare attentively, and I discovered what had happened. I had put out its eyes without wounding it anywhere else.

I broke its neck by the famous blow which kills a hare, although Arnal calls it the _rabbit-blow._

Then I re-loaded my gun, my heart still thumping and my hand shaking. It occurred to me that I was making the charge extra strong, but I was sure of the gun, and the excess of four or five inches would give me a chance to kill at longer range.

I had hardly got back into position before I saw another hare coming straight for me.

I was cured of my fancy for firing at its head; moreover, this one promised to pass me broadside on, within twenty-five paces, and it kept its promise. I aimed with greater calmness than might have been expected of me, and fired, convinced that I had now secured a brace of hares.

The priming burnt, but the shot did not go off.

This was a sad misfortune.

I tried to let off one of M. Deviolaine's expressive oaths, but it was a half-hearted attempt: they did not seem to suit me. I never could swear properly, even in my angriest moments.

I pricked my gun, I primed it, and I waited.

M. Moquet had certainly not deceived me: a third hare came in the wake of its predecessors, and, like the last one, it crossed at right angles to me, within twenty paces! As before, I aimed and, when I had covered it carefully with my gun, I pressed my finger on the trigger.

Only the priming burnt.

I was furious; I could have cried with rage; all the more as a fourth hare was coming along at a gentle trot.

It was the same with this one as with the two others. He was as obliging as possible, and my gun as perverse as can be imagined.

It passed within fifteen steps of me, and, for the third time, my priming burnt, but the gun did not go off.

This time I wept outright. A good shot would have killed four hares in my position; and, although I was only a beginner, I ought certainly to have killed two.

This was the end of the battue. M. Moquet came to me. Placed in a hollow, as I was, none of the other shooters had seen the triple misfortunes that had happened to me; but M. Moquet, having seen all the hares pass by me and hearing no reports, had come to find out whether I was dead or asleep.

I was simply desperate. I showed him my gun.

"The priming has burnt three times, M. Moquet," I cried, in woebegone tones; "three times over three hares!"

"A flash in the pan, eh?" asked M. Moquet.

"Yes, it missed fire.... What the deuce can be the matter with the breech?"

M. Moquet shook his head; then, like an old sportsman who is never at a loss, he took out of his bag a gun-screw, fitted it to the end of his ramrod, drew out first the wadding of my gun, then the shot, then the second lot of wadding, then the powder; then, after the powder, half an inch of earth which had got down the muzzle when I threw my gun after the hare, and which I had rammed to the bottom of the breech with my first wad on the powder.

If I had fired at a hundred hares my gun would have missed fire a hundred times.

Alas! so frail are human affairs! had it not been for that half inch of earth I should have killed two or three hares, and I should have been the king of the battue.

Every hare had passed my way, except one which had passed by M. Dumont of Morienval and been killed by him.

My good luck departed with that first battue. There were ten more, but not one hare came my way.

I returned to the house tired out. I had killed a hare a hundred paces from the farm; M. Moquet had offered to send it there at once, but I declined to be thus parted from it, and I carried it on my back some eight or ten leagues.

I need hardly say that amidst the jokes which always enliven a shooting party's dinner I came in for a large share. The evolutions which I had executed; all the hares coming my way from an instinct that my gun was loaded with earth; no more passing me after my gun was put right again; all these items, to say nothing of my face, which had been scratched by the hare during my hand-to-hand struggle with it, formed capital themes for jesting.

But one thing made me forget all these quips and jibes, and sent me into an ecstasy of unspeakable happiness.

The series of jokes of which I was the butt finished by M. Deviolaine saying:

"Never mind! I will take you boar-hunting next Thursday, to see if you will catch hold of those gentry, with your arms round their bodies, as you catch hares."

"Do you really mean it, cousin?"

"Honour bright."

"On your honour, really?"

"On my word of honour."

And my delight was so great at this promise that I left the table and went off into the foldyard, to tease a fine bull, who thought nothing of me or my games, but who, when tired of my teasings, would have disembowelled me, if I had not rushed back into the kitchen by jumping over one of the small latticework gates always to be found about farms.

The bull followed me so closely that he put his head over the low gate and bellowed fit to shake the house down.

Madame Moquet calmly took a burning brand from the hearth and put it under the bull's muzzle, whereat he jumped back five or six steps, gave a few tremendous bounds, and disappeared into his stall.

It was not my custom to boast of such feats as these; on the contrary, when anything of the sort occurred to me, I resumed my tranquillity as quickly as possible, and returned to the place from whence I had set forth, with my hands behind my back, like Napoleon, humming _Fleuve du Tage_ or _Partant pour la Syrie_, airs much in vogue just then, in a voice almost as cracked as that of the great King Louis XV.

Unluckily, Mas, M. Deviolaine's groom, had seen me, with the result that for the next fortnight my agility in jumping gates was the subject of ironical congratulations from Cécile, Augustine, and Félix.

Fortunately Louise was not able to talk yet, or she would most certainly have joined in with the others.

Mas put the horse into his master's carriage; for, as M. Deviolaine had to be at his inspection very early next morning, he preferred to return over night: besides, it was a splendid moonlight night.

M. Moquet tried every possible argument to induce M. Deviolaine to remain, but he had made up his mind, and he asked that preparations should be made to set off that same evening.

There was a custom at M. Moquet's which I have rarely seen elsewhere, even in houses which pride themselves on their aristocratic habits: when the shooters had left, not a single morsel of game remained at the farm; each person took away with him in his carriage-box, in his basket, or in his game-bag, his share of the game, distributed by the master of the house: who alone was always forgotten.

When we reached Villers-Cotterets, we found seven hares under the carriage box-seat.

There had been thirty-nine, killed in all.

Here I may be allowed to relate a singular proof of the love of a bitch for her puppies.

When I first made the acquaintance of my brother-in-law he possessed an intelligent dog called Figaro, who could mount guard, dance a minuet, salute the police, and turn his back on the gamekeepers. This dog had been succeeded by a charming sporting dog called Sabine. She had none of the attractive talents of the late Figaro; but she could point and retrieve most wonderfully.

My brother-in-law had left her at home for two reasons: first, because a pointer is a more tiresome than a useful companion in a battue; secondly, because she was too far gone in pup to be active.

Great therefore was our astonishment when, on re-entering the farm, at the end of the shoot, Victor saw Sabine, who came quietly up to us; she had managed to escape, and with the wonderful instinct of animals had followed her master.

When we were leaving, Sabine was called; but she did not appear. She was searched for, and the poor beast was found in a corner of the yard, where she had just given birth to three pups.

As Victor had no desire to breed dogs, he begged M. Moquet's son to make a hole in a heap of litter which was by the gate and fling the three puppies in it.

The request was carried out, in spite of poor Sabine's winnings; she had to be tied to the seat of the carriage to make sure she would return to Villers-Cotterets with us.

Sabine howled for a little while; then, after a few minutes, she settled down between our legs, and seemed to have forgotten all about them.

But when we reached the gate we had to undo Sabine, who leapt from the carriage to the ground without touching the step, and took the road back to Brassoire at full speed.

It was in vain my brother-in-law whistled and called her; the louder he called, the more he whistled, the more Sabine quickened her pace.

He could not go after her at that hour: it was midnight. Victor consigned her to Diana the huntress, and we went in, taking care to leave the garden door open, so that Sabine could get in to her kennel, if by chance she took it into her head to return home.

Next morning the earliest riser amongst us found Sabine in her kennel, asleep, with her three pups between her paws.

She had sought them at Brassoire, and as she could only bring home one at a time in her mouth, she had evidently made three journeys for them.

It was three and a half leagues from Villers-Cotterets and Brassoire; so Sabine had run twenty-one leagues during the night.

Her maternal devotion was rewarded by being allowed to keep her three puppies.