ing
storm,--I hush my griefs to rest in tracing the picture of past
delights. Yes, memory comes to my relief; I build again in the casket of
the mind my sylvan hut, careless and full of youthful fancies. I am
again seated in the depths of my native woods, speaking to the
light-hearted thrush, and whistling to the breeze.

Once more I bathe myself in the golden rays of the mid-day sun; I tread
again the forest paths, and am intoxicated with the delicious perfume of
its wild flowers. Hark! again I hear the cooing of the amorous doves,
and in the distance the notes of the dull cuckoo, bewailing his solitary
life.--But no more....

The _Mares_, very different from one another, and having each of them
very different admirers, are of three kinds; they are either small or
large, near or distant from the village or neighbouring hamlet; and
according as they are circumstanced in one or other of these respects
they are more or less valuable. The largest, the deepest, the least
known, those in short that are situated in the recesses of the forest,
are the best and most frequented by game; to balance this advantage they
are the most fatiguing and the most difficult to approach.

In the violent heats of July and August, when the sun burns up the
herbage, when the wind as it passes parches the skin, and the sultry air
scarcely allows the lungs to play--when the earth is quite dried up--the
hot-blooded animals, whose circulation is rapid, remain completely
overpowered with the heat in their retreats all day, either stretched
panting on the leaves, or lurking in the shade of some rock; but the
moment the sun, in amber clouds, sinks below the horizon, and twilight
brings in his train the dark hours of night, and its humid vapours, the
beasts of the forest are again in movement, again their ravenous
appetite returns, and they lose no time in ranging the woods, seeking
how and where they may gratify it. Then it is these large _Mares_,
silent as a woman that listens at a keyhole--silent as a catacomb, is
all at once endowed with life,--is filled with strange noises, like an
aviary, and becomes, as night falls, a common centre to which the hungry
and thirsty cavalcade direct their steps.

The first arrivals are hundreds of birds, of every size and colour, who
come to gossip, to bathe, to drink, and splash the water with their
wings. Next come troops of hares and rabbits, who come to nibble the
fresh grass that grows there in great luxur