g,
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.

CHAPTER XIV.

_Mare_ No. 2.--Description of it--Not sought after by the sportsman--The
sick banker--The doctor's prescription--The patient's disgust at it--Is
at length obliged to yield--Leaves Paris for Le Morvan--Consequences to
the inmates of the chateau--The banker convalescent.

If the great _Mares_ No. 1, situated in the dark and silent depths of
the forest, far from every habitation, and where you find you are left
as much to yourself as the poor shipwrecked sailor supporting his
exhausted frame upon a single plank on the angry billows, are so
attractive, and so much coveted, though dangerous and difficult to
secure, the same cannot be said of those which lie in the vicinity of a
village, and which I shall call _Mare_ No. 2.

These last are to be met with easily enough; but being so very readily
discovered, it is therefore rare to find near them the larger
descriptions of game,--though the sportsman may see a few thrushes, some
dozen of water-wagtails, and flocks of little impudent chaffinches,
greenfinches, &c., which come there to imbibe, hopping from stone to
stone, and singing in the willows; beyond these he will see nothing
worth the cap on the nipple of his gun. Nevertheless to him who is
without experience,--to the hunter who cannot read the language of the
forest on the bark of the trees, on the freshly trodden ground, or the
bent grass and broken flowers,--these pieces of water seem quite as
beautiful and well situated, indeed quite as desirable, as the others.

Perhaps such an ignor