Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches by Henri de Crignelle

Author:Henri de Crignelle [Crignelle, Henri de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, New Age, History, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9781465547132
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2021-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

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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 château—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 ignoramus 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

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