curious to watch the operations of "aristocratic
sport," the intelligent bird, following the precedent of Edgar Poe's
Raven, should alight, unseen and uninvited, on some object of art in a
fashionable ballroom. Here he would find himself at once in the thick of
the brilliant competition. He would see a row of lovely archers, backed
by a second row of older and more experienced markswomen. And in the
human pigeons now cowering before their combined artillery he would
recognise the heroes so lately engaged in dispatching thousands of the
feathered branch of the family to oblivion. At first sight it might
strike an animal of his well-known gallantry that there was nothing so
very terrible in their impending fate. To fall slain by bright eyes, and
with the strains of Coote and Tinney lingering on the ear, to sigh out
one's soul over a draught of seltzer and champagne or the sweet poison
of a strawberry ice, might seem to the winged spectator a blissful
ending.

The doorway of the perfumed saloon might seem but the portal of a
Mahomedan paradise, in which young and beautiful houris are deporting
themselves under the guardian eye of the older and less beautiful
houris. To the denizen of the air all, save the want of oxygen, might
appear divine. But when he surveyed more closely that sexual row of
sportswomen, he would know at once that he beheld the true avengers of
his race. In their stony glare, in the cold glitter of their diamonds,
in the ample proportions of their well-developed shoulders, in their
sliding scale of manners, now adjusted to a sugary smile and now to a
stare of annihilation, he would read a deadly purpose. Nor would the
diversities of skill which this fringe of amazons exhibited in the use
of their weapons escape his notice. He would see some whom success had
made affable, and others whom failure had made desperate; some who
covered their victim with an aim of pitiless precision, and others who
spoilt their chances by bungling audacity. Conspicuous among them he
would observe a giddy sexagenarian, whose random attempts to share in
the sport made her the laughing-stock of the circle.

And as he surveyed the _battue_ he would gradually discern its tactics.
The beautiful beings in tulle he would feel, by instinct, were a lure
and a decoy. Once within reach of their victims, these lovely
skirmishers would be seen to inflict on them a sudden wound, leaving
them to be despatched by the heavy reserve in _moire_