amus might prefer them; for they are always more
open, more free from weeds, rushes and flags, and less dark; and at the
hour of _la chasse au poste_, the hour of twilight, they are as solitary
as the _Mare_ No. 1. But the savage beasts of the forest are not to be
deceived; their instinct tells them that at a quarter, or perhaps half a
mile from them, there is, though unseen and hidden in the thickness of
the trees, a farm, or two or three houses; and when they are not pressed
onward by the winter snows, or by maddening hunger, they stop,--for the
smell of man is not pleasant to their nostrils, the neighbourhood is not
agreeable to them, and they immediately withdraw from the spot.

It is thus that these _Mares_ are always at any person's disposal; the
passing sportsman rarely makes more than a circuit round them; and if
one is occasionally found on their banks, he may at once be set down as
a beginner, who, having found the _Mares_ No. 1 in the vicinity all
occupied, has here installed himself for the evening in sheer vexation
and despair. Over these pools of troubled water, frequented during the
whole day by the inhabitants of the adjoining cottages, that eternal
stillness and imposing solitude, which are the delight of the wolf and
the boar, never reigns.

The day has scarcely dawned ere the wood-cutters' wives, in their red
petticoats, with brown jugs on their heads, come to fill them there, or
to wash their vegetables; the cows to drink, the children to play at
ducks and drakes, or the men to water the horses. But a little before
nightfall all this going and coming, this trampling of heavy _sabots_,
the bellowings, oaths, and cracking of whips subside, and cease, as if
by magic, when the sun is down. The poultry and the peasants are equally
silent, their huts are closed, their beds are gained, and their dogs,
stretched motionless behind the door, snore and sleep soundly with open
ear, and every leaf without is still.

The _chasseur a l'affut_, if inexperienced or not acquainted with the
country, while reconnoitring the spot during the last few minutes of the
twilight that remain, would never imagine that he was near an inhabited
spot; not a bark, not a sound, not one twinkling light in a cottage
window, not one wreath of ascending smoke is to be heard or seen.
Thinking therefore that he has made a grand discovery, he rubs his hands
with no little satisfaction, squats down at the foot of some tree, or in
the tempo