hich had the desired
effect. The fact was, he was quite drunk, though not disorderly.

These wolves, during the ardent heats of August, suffer dreadfully from
thirst; and finding no water, take to the vineyards, and endeavour to
assuage it by eating large quantities of grapes, very cool, and no doubt
very delightful at the time; but the treacherous juice ferments,
Bacchanalian fumes soon infect their brain, and for several hours these
gentlemen are for a time entirely deprived of their senses. What a field
for Father Mathew; but never, I am certain, has the worthy Apostle of
Temperance ever dreamed of offering the pledge to the wolves of Le
Morvan--the rub would be to hang the medal round the necks of these
Bacchanals of the forest.

CHAPTER XIX.

Wolf-hunting, an expensive amusement--The _Traquenard_--Mode of
setting this trap--A night in the forest with Navarre--The young
lover--Dreadful accident that befell him--His courage and efforts
to escape--The fatal catastrophe--The poor mad mother.

Wolf-hunting in the forests is an expensive amusement, whether they are
killed by the method I have described,--namely, of employing beaters,
and shooting them when breaking through the line of sportsmen, or
running them down with dogs. The peasants and _traqueurs_ have to be
paid, in the first case; hunters and hounds have to be purchased and
maintained, in the second, without counting the innumerable incidental
expenses which a kennel of hounds always brings in its train. This kind
of establishment is too extravagant for our country-gentlemen, and thus
it is that for one wolf killed in the great meetings, or with the dogs,
thirty are taken in pits and snares, or by some species of stratagem.

Every small farmer or large proprietor, to protect his family and his
cattle,--every shepherd, to protect himself and his flock, invokes to
his aid the genius of strategy; and as the mind of man is a sponge full
of expedients, from which once pressed by the hard fingers of necessity
many an ingenious device is extracted, innumerable are the various
seductive baits that in our plains and forests are placed in the way of
the gluttonous appetite of the wolf; and I shall now describe the
inventions that are more generally adopted.

The favourite trap employed in Le Morvan is the _Traquenard_. This is
the most dangerous, and the strongest that is made, requiring two men to
set it; it has springs of great power,