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onsolation in his greatest misfortunes--he whiffed away, burying his irritated countenance in his breast by way of showing his vexation. It seems to me but yesterday these eight hours passed in the forest in the silence of that starlight night, hid in the branches, and waiting for the wolves! We caught three, and nine galloped under the very oak in which we were seated. This midnight scene was exciting beyond description; and the worthy Navarre, notwithstanding his pipe, his fox-skin cap, and his goat-skin riding-coat, caught such a melancholy cold, that he did nothing but sneeze and hoop the whole of the next day, making more noise than all the dogs and cattle in the farm put together. Wolf-hunting with traps has its dangers and its inconveniences, and the _Traquenard_ must be used with great caution. Every morning it should be visited and shut; otherwise a man, a horse, a dog, or some other animal, may fall into it, and be taken. In order, therefore, as much as possible to prevent accidents, our peasants, farmers, and poachers, when using this kind of trap, always tie stones, or little pieces of dead wood, to the bushes and branches of the trees near the spot in which it is set; they likewise place the same kind of signal at the extremity of the pathway which leads to the trap, as a warning to those who may walk that way; and the peasants, who know what these signals dancing in the air with every puff of wind mean, turn aside, and take very good care how they proceed on their road. In spite of all these precautions, however, very sad occurrences will sometimes happen in our forests. Some years ago a trap was placed in a deserted footway, and the usual precautions were taken of hanging stones and bits of wood in the approach to the path at either end. The same day, a young man of the neighbourhood, full of love and imprudence--upon the eve, in fact, of being entangled in the conjugal "I will"--anxious to present to his _fiancee_ some turtle-doves and pigeons with rosy beaks, with whose whereabouts he was acquainted, left his home a little before sunset to surprise the birds on their nest; but he was late, the night closed in rapidly, and with the intention of shortening the road, instead of following the beaten one he took his way across the forest. Without in the least heeding the brambles and bushes which caught his legs, or the ditches and streams he was obliged to cross, he pressed on; and after a continued an
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