CHAPTER I

The second period of my youth--Forest-keepers and sailors--Choron, Moinat, Mildet, Berthelin--La Maison-Neuve.

As I have now entered upon the second period of my youth, and put off the boy's toga to don that of adolescence, I must make my readers acquainted with the individuals who peopled the second circle of my life, as they have already become acquainted with those who peopled the first.

There exists in localities bordering great woods a peculiar people who, in the midst of the general population, keep their own stamp and character, and contribute a quota of poetry (which is the soul of the world) to swell the mass.

These are the forest-rangers.

I have lived much among keepers and much among sailors, and I have always been struck by the great similarity between these two races of men; both, as a rule, are unemotional, religious, and dreamers. The sailor or the forest-keeper will often stay side by side with his greatest friend (the one while forty or fifty knots are being sailed on the ocean; the other walking eight or ten leagues through big woods) without exchanging a single word, apparently without hearing or noticing anything; but, in reality, not a sound echoes in the air that the ear does not catch; not a movement stirs the surface of the water or the depth of the leaves that has been overlooked; and, as they both have the same ideas, similar instincts and similar feelings, as this silence has really been one long dumb conversation, it is not surprising that, when occasion demands, it is only necessary to utter a word, make a significant gesture or exchange a glance, and they will have managed to express more ideas by that glance, that gesture, that word, than others could in a long dissertation. But when they talk at night, round a woodland bivouac, or over their own fires, always well supplied with fuel and firewood, these reserved and silent dreamers can hold forth at great length, and picturesquely enough: the keepers about their hunting, the sailors about their storms!

The poetry of vast oceans and wide forests, which has descended upon them from the crests of the waves and the tree-tops, makes their language unadorned and yet imaginative. Their words are expressive and simple.

These people, one feels, are the elect of nature and of solitude, who have almost forgotten the language of human beings, and speak that of the winds, the trees, the torrents, and the storms of the seas!

It was into the hands of this remarkable people that I passed when I left the care of my womenkind. They were specially noteworthy at Villers-Cotterets on account of the extent of forest which isolated them from the town, to which they only came once a week to take orders from the inspector, whilst their wives went to mass.

As a matter of fact, my appearance among these people had been long looked forward to by them; nearly all had hunted with my father, who, as we know, had leave to go where he liked in the forest, and all kept a lively remembrance of his generosity. Some of them, too, were old soldiers who had served under him, and who had got into the forest administration through his influence: in fact, all these honest people, who thought they could trace the same disposition to be openhanded as the general had been,--for so they always spoke of my father,--had been most friendly to me, and had always asked me, when they met me by chance at _la pipée_ or at _la marette_:----

"Well, when is our inspector going to invite you to a more serious hunt?"

The invitation came at last, and it was for the following Thursday.

The rendezvous was at la Maison-Neuve, on the Soissons road, at the house of a head keeper called Choron.

There are four or five men, belonging to the class which I have tried to sketch in general outline, who deserve particular mention on account of their skill and their originality, and Choron was one of these men.

I have already had occasion to speak of him more than once; but I have spoken of him under another name. To-day, as I am writing memoirs, and not a romance, he must appear under his true name, since they are actual catastrophes I am about to relate.

At the period at which we have arrived, namely, the beginning of the year 1816, Choron was a fine young man of about thirty, with an open, frank countenance, fair hair, blue eyes, his jolly face well framed with big whiskers; he was finely made, about five feet four inches in height; and, added to the symmetry of his limbs, he possessed Herculean strength, which was talked of for ten leagues round.

Choron was always ready. Until he got jealous ideas into his head,--miserable ideas which ended fatally for him,--no one could say he had ever seen Choron ill or gloomy.

It mattered not at what time of day or night M. Deviolaine might knock at his door to question him, he was always the same. He knew, almost to within fifty yards, where the wild boars' lairs were in his range of forest; for Choron, like Bas-de-Cuir, would follow a trail for whole days together. If the meet was at Maison-Neuve, if sport were desired a quarter of a league, half a league, or a whole league from there, if the beast had been diverted by Choron, it was known beforehand what sort of a beast they had to deal with, whether a _tiean_, a youngster or an old boar; a boar or a sow; if the sow was in pig, and how long she had gone. The most artful old boar could not hide six months of his age from Choron, who, by inspecting his footmarks, could verify his birth certificate.

It was wonderful to watch him, and it especially astonished the Parisian sportsmen who came to hunt in our forest from time to time. To us countrybred huntsmen, who had practised the same art, though in a humbler degree, the power did not seem so supernatural.

But, all the same, Choron was looked upon by his comrades as a kind of oracle in all matters connected with the hunting of big game.

Courage, too, soon acquires a mighty power over men. Choron did not know what fear meant; he had never shrunk back before either man or beast. He would hunt out the boar from the deepest lair; he would attack poachers in their safe strongholds. Truth to tell, Choron did receive some tusk thrusts in his thigh occasionally, or some grapeshot in his back; but he had a sovereign remedy for treating such wounds. He would bring up two or three bottles of white wine from his cellar, pull one of his dogs from its pet corner, lie down on a deerskin, make Rocador or Fanfaro lick his wound; and, meanwhile, to compensate for the blood he had lost, he would swallow what he called his _cooling draught_; he would not reappear that evening, but by the morrow he would be cured.

Yet, singularly enough, Choron was not a first-rate shot, and in what were called "hamper hunts "--that is to say, when the object was to send away smaller game, such as rabbits, hares, partridges, or venison, to the duc d'Orléans--Choron rarely supplied his quota.

On these occasions he yielded the sovereignty of the chase to Moinat or to Mildet.

Moinat was the best marksman with small shot, and Mildet the first at bullet firing, in the forest of Villers-Cotterets. If it was Montagnon who had taught me how to take a gun to pieces and put it together again, it was Moinat who had taught me how to use it. Montagnon had only made a gunsmith's assistant of me; Moinat turned me out an accomplished shot.

When Moinat's gun covered any animal whatsoever, from a snipe to a deer, it was, bar accident, as good as dead: and the same skill often extended to those who went hunting with him. M. Deviolaine invited Moinat to his special hunts, declaring that he never shot well unless he felt Moinat near his side.

Once, when I was third in one of these hunts, I discovered the secret: Moinat fired simultaneously with M. Deviolaine, and the prey fell. M. Deviolaine was under the supposition that he alone had killed it, and appropriated the game; but really it fell to Moinat's gun. Sometimes, however, he allowed M. Deviolaine to fire by himself; and it was rarely then that anything fell.

Moinat had the good sense never to boast of these coincidences, and he remained the inspector's favourite to the end of his days.

Moinat was sixty at the time of which I am writing; but in walking powers and in keenness of eye he could hold his own with the youngest. On the open ground he could walk his ten leagues without a stumble; in the marsh-land he would go into the water and mire up to his middle; he would trample over the thickest of the underwood in the forest, and over the thorniest of brambles. My father was very fond of Moinat, so he did me a great honour, which he would not have done for just anybody,--he constituted himself both my friend and my teacher. I may add that he has not had any cause to regret his offices, for I believe I proved myself a worthy pupil of him, until I was forbidden leave to hunt in the State forests because I killed too much game, and because of a blow I was so foolish as to give an inspector.

I quarrelled with Moinat almost in the same fashion as Vandyke quarrelled with Rubens: one day I killed a roebuck that he had just missed, and he never forgave me.

Although I have said that Moinat was the crack firer with small shot and Mildet first with the bullet, I do not mean thereby to imply that Moinat was not also first rate with bullet as with shot; but that Mildet had made a special study of bullet-shooting during a long residence in Germany. I have seen him nail a squirrel as it ran quickly up the trunk of an oak. I have seen him put a horseshoe on a wall and place six bullets in the six nail-holes of the shoe. I have seen him in carbine shooting, when there were twelve shots to be made, draw a cordon round the black with the first eleven balls and then hit the middle with the twelfth.

Berthelin, Choron's uncle, came next in the order of merit. He was certain of hitting three out of four tries; then, after Berthelin, we descend to the ordinary run of men.

From the days of the emperor the big game of the forest of Villers-Cotterets had been strictly preserved. During the first return of the Bourbons it had been sold as forest domain to the duc d'Orléans, but he had not time to turn his attention to it. After the second restoration--partly out of opposition, partly on account of actual losses--the adjacent property holders made many complaints because of the ravages caused by the larger animals; and as they took legal action in the matter, the most stringent commands were issued to M. Deviolaine to destroy the boars.

Orders of this sort are always looked upon very favourably by the keepers. Boar being royal game, the keepers have no right to shoot it, or if they shoot it by chance it is required of them for the table. Then they are simply paid twenty-four sous for the shot, I believe; but in case of exterminating the beasts each one shot belongs by right to its marksman, and we can well understand that a boar in the salting tub is a famous addition to the winter store.

These hunting expeditions had been going on for a couple of months, when M. Deviolaine gave me the famous invitation which put me into such a state of ecstasy.

Mixed with this joy there was the thought of danger in the background: these fine boars, which had been left at peace for three or four years, had increased and multiplied to such an extent that the old ones had grown to a tremendous size; and the youngsters simply abounded. They could be met in the forest in herds of twelve and fifteen, and they had even been killed in the town vegetable gardens that winter.

A kind of proverb, consisting of question and answer, had been improvised among those who lived on the edge of the forest.

_Question_: When potatoes are planted within five hundred steps from the forest, do you know what comes up?

_Answer_: Why, potatoes of course ...!

_Reply to the answer_: No! Boars come up.

And the most contentious questioner was obliged to grant the truth of the assertion.

Now these hunts lasted nearly four months from the 15th of September.

Choron performed wonders during those four months. When the rendezvous took place at Maison-Neuve, and Choron was deputed to drive the boar, there were high rejoicings indeed, for one was certain of not finding the game flown. It is true that there was a league and a half to walk before Maison-Neuve could be reached; but, when one reached that out-of-the-way place by a beautiful route cut right through the heart of the forest, there was Choron standing a few steps from his doorway, with his hunting-horn on his wrist, saluting his inspector and his party with a spirited blast and flourish. It was meant to express that the beasts would die, or the inspector and his party would be indeed a stupid lot.

Inside Choron's house we found half a dozen bottles of his _cooling mixture_, as he dubbed his white wine, glasses rubbed scrupulously bright by a charming housewife, and a ten-pound loaf, which looked as white as though it had been kneaded of snow. We ate a slice of this bread with a piece of cheese; we paid our compliments to Madame Choron on her bread, her cheese and the beauty of her eyes; and then we set off a-hunting.

We must just add that Choron worshipped his wife, and grew more and more jealous on her account every day, without cause. His mates would sometimes twit him about this increasing jealousy, but their harmless merriment was short-lived: Choron would turn as white as death, he would shake his fine head, and, turning towards the person who had rashly touched upon the heart-sore that was beyond the cure of his dogs' tongues, he would say:--

"Stop, you--you had better hold your tongue; and that right quickly;--the sooner you stop the better it will be for you!"

The ill-advised joker would stop immediately. Folks gradually ceased to venture upon any allusion to this strong fellow's only weakness, and in a very short time it bid fair never to be mentioned at all.