Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches Part 5

"Then look out for yourself," said I, and with a rapid movement I attempted to draw my _couteau de cha.s.se_; but long before I could get it out, he had seized me with both hands, and in a twinkling I measured my length upon the turf, and the knife was in his possession.

"Child of violence!" he said, as he set me again on my legs, and pushed me from him, "Do you then already love to shed blood? Would you kill a man for a hare? Have you not the sense to distinguish a joke from an insult? There," he added, giving me back my knife, which had fallen from its sheath in the struggle, "young man, do your worst!"

But I was now as angry with myself as I had been with the old man, and heartily ashamed of my conduct. I turned on my heel, and walked off, vexed beyond expression at my intemperate folly.

The very next day, as good fortune would have it, I met him again in the forest, and lost not a moment in asking his forgiveness for my brutal conduct of the previous day.

"Ah! you acknowledge your fault, do you?" replied the Pere Seguin, "enough, that shows you have a heart. I bear you no ill-will; you are _vif_ as the mountain breeze, but that comes of being young. Give me your hand, and when you want a dove or lilies of the valley for your sister, venison or wild boar for your friends, I, my gun, and my dog, are at your service; but"--and he whispered in my ear--"no more knives."

"See! see!" and I opened my jacket, "it is gone. I threw it into the moat this morning."

"'Tis well! very well! You have had a happy escape, young man. _Au revoir._ Now, Faro, take your leave of Monsieur;" and instantly obeying a sign from his master, the red dog licked my boots. A moment more, and they were both lost to view in the forest.

From that time I was frequently with the Pere Seguin, for he seemed to have a fancy--a sort of affection for me, and on my part I had an incomprehensible pleasure in his society, though in the early part of our acquaintance I could not divest myself of an undefined dread of him; and had some difficulty in reconciling myself to the harsh and guttural tones of his voice, and his peculiarly severe physiognomy. Nevertheless, many an evening did I slip away from the paternal hearth, much to the distress of my poor mother, to seat myself on one of his wooden stools, and eat the chestnuts he was roasting in the embers, while he related, by the pale light of his small charcoal fire, which but dimly showed the extent even of his small room, frightful stories of ghosts, suicides, drownings, and fearful murders, with which he delighted to terrify me; and, dear reader, he succeeded to perfection, for all the time I sat listening to them I was cold, and trembled like a leaf in the northern blast.

Well do I remember--yes, as well as if it had been yesterday--going out with him to fish for barbel, and joining him over-night to go in search of bait. I found him crouched by his fire, eating potatoes out of the same plate with his dog. This frugal meal over, he took up a small lantern, a large box, and a long spade, and beckoned me to follow him.

The moon was rising as we left the hut, but red as blood, lightning streaked the sky at short intervals, and the wind howled as if a storm was approaching. Pere Seguin rubbed his hands, and an expression of satisfaction pa.s.sed across his extraordinary countenance; for, living as he did a lonely wandering life, he had become superst.i.tious, and firmly believed that worms caught at certain hours of the night, and in a breeze that foretold an approaching tempest, were more likely to attract the fish than those taken in the daylight. To this article of his creed I offered no objection, but I own my heart shrunk within me when I observed that he took the direct road to the burial-ground. "Pere Seguin," said I, "we need go no further; the turf in this lane is capital; we shall find all we want here without a longer walk." "Since when," he inquired in a voice that seemed to come from between his shoulders, "since when have young fawns taught the old roebuck the way to the forest-glades?" And he strode on without a word more, still in the direction I so much abhorred.

Arriving at the cemetery, Pere Seguin walked leisurely round it, paying as much attention to me as if I had not been with him, and I followed like a criminal going to the scaffold. After having made a careful examination of the wall, he stopped suddenly, gave me the lantern and the spade, and leaped upon the top, desiring me to do the same. I hesitated, and fell back, for I felt more inclined to throw them down and run away, and Pere Seguin saw it.

"Ha! ha!" he exclaimed, fixing his yellow eye upon me. "I thought you were heart of oak, young Sir; are you only a man of straw?"

I gave no answer, but I leaped on to the wall like a rope-dancer.

"Hum!" he muttered; "good legs, but a faint heart." And he begun rapidly to turn up the rank gra.s.s, and pick the large red worms from amongst the roots, when, looking up in my face, he said, with infinite coolness, "Why, you are as pale as my mother was on the day of her death! What ails you?"

"Ails me!" I replied, repressing my fears, "why to tell you the truth, I'd just as soon be anywhere else as here."

"Pooh! pooh! young man; one must accustom one's self to everything in this world. We must learn--be always learning. Remember, for instance, for I'll be bound that you never heard of such a thing before, that worms taken in a burial-ground are the finest possible bait for barbel, do you hear?--taken by moonlight from the roots of the hemlock."

"Good heavens! Pere Seguin, I would rather never catch a fish for the rest of my days than touch one of those worms!"

"Nonsense, my lad--nonsense; they are admirable bait--fine fat fellows--sure to take. We shall have a wonderful day to-morrow. You will soon see how the giants and gourmands of the streams will snap at these beauties."

"Hang the barbel, Pere Seguin!--let us leave this cold churchyard. I feel sick, and a clammy cold creeping over me already--do let us be gone;" but he would not move.

"Don't feel unwell, pray don't; it is a well-known fact, that any person who feels ill in a churchyard is sure to die within the year."

"Let us leave then, for I do feel very ill;" but the purveyor of worms was now too much occupied to listen to me.

Hopeless, therefore, of inducing him to leave till he had filled his box, I sat down on a tombstone, and the noise he made with the spade in the silence, the darkness, and the peculiar and sickening odour of the place, filled me with an indescribable sense of fear and horror.

At length the poacher paused, and having disentangled a very long worm from the twisted roots of a large clod, he said, "This makes one hundred and thirteen--a holy number. Now I've done, my lad; let us be off."

"Yes--oh, yes!"--for the minutes seemed hours--"let us go instantly;"

and I sprang from the tombstone, while Pere Seguin proceeded deliberately to fill up the holes, and replace the turf, whistling through his moustache just as if he had been in the middle of his garden.

"One hundred and thirteen!--I like that number."

"So do I, Pere Seguin; but do let us be going. If we remain here, they will think that we have killed and buried some one. Do, pray, be off;"

and I made for the wall.

"Stop!" he said suddenly, drawing himself up to his full height, six feet three, "Stop!" and throwing out his long arms, which made his shadow on the stones resemble an immense black cross, "Hold there! Look!

Do you see that tomb--that large gray stone?"

"I see nothing, Pere Seguin, I will see nothing. I close my eyes, and only desire to be gone."

"As you please," said the poacher; "but you are wrong. I could have told you a curious history--a most interesting history."

"Thanks for your histories--much obliged to you; but I have had enough of them." Still Pere Seguin would persevere: "A woman, who has appeared to me three times--yes, three following days--spoken to me, pulled me by the fingers and by the beard eight days after her death."

"Yes! yes! I know; but which way are we to get out of this infernal place?"

"Why, what a hurry you are in!--I say stop, and let me say good night to her!"--and Pere Seguin approached the tall gray stone, the moon s.h.i.+ning full upon it, and struck it with the handle of his spade, calling each time in a solemn voice, "Madeleine! Madeleine! Madeleine!"

Had I been at that frightful moment cut in four quarters, not one drop of blood would have been found in my veins; my teeth chattered with terror, and I would have given every acre of my inheritance for strength enough to run away. "Madeleine! Madeleine!" le Pere Seguin continued in a low and churchyard tone, "Madeleine!" he cried, leaning on the gray tomb, "'tis me, Seguin--le Pere Seguin; good night, good night, Madeleine!"

I could not speak, I could not move; and certainly had the lady whispered only one single little word in reply, I should have fainted.

"Well, it is all over; she is dead for certain now!" said the poacher, shaking his head. "Alas! poor Madeleine! Gone in the flower of her age!

Dead at two-and-twenty, for having offered me a violet! Dead! Let us begone."

I beg you to understand I did not put him to the necessity of repeating his words, but found my legs in excellent running order in a moment.

"Hold! not so fast!" said my companion, just as I was springing at the wall, and thought myself out of danger, "Hold! Down there, my young gentleman, in that dark corner amongst the brambles. You see that little heap of earth, which one might fancy a dead man alive had pushed up with his knees; well, there also is one of my comrades. Ho! halloo, Jerome!"

"Pere Seguin," said I, "this is unworthy of you; you have no right thus to mock at and disturb the dead; you only want to torment me; and I have already told you, and I repeat it, I feel exceedingly ill."

"Come, come along then--let us go. I shall return here presently to sleep. Good night, Madeleine!--good night, Jerome!--good night, all of you who are sleeping so quietly under the green turf!"--and it seemed to me, as these adieus were uttered, that icy breezes pa.s.sed from every tomb across my face, whispering in my ears, "Good night!" and that the firs, the yews, the cypress bending across our path seemed to salute us as we left the horrible precincts.

We soon regained the town, and on the road there I would not have turned my head for a crown of rubies; Pere Seguin, meanwhile, coolly carrying his box of worms, which I would not have touched for the best place in Paradise.

The next morning, instead of fis.h.i.+ng for barbel, I was unable to rise from my bed; and for fifteen nights I never closed my eyes without seeing in my dreams ghosts, and all the horrid details of the churchyard and the charnel-house.

CHAPTER IX.

Pa.s.sage of the woodc.o.c.k in November--Their laziness--Night travelling--Mode of snaring them at night--Numbers taken in this way--This sport adapted rather for the poacher--The _braconnier_ of Le Morvan--His mode of life--The poacher's dog--The double poacher.

The object of this chapter will be to give the reader some little insight into the habits of the woodc.o.c.k, and the mode of snaring them in the forests of Le Morvan, during the month of November. At the close of this month, Dame Nature's barometer, their instinct, far better than the quicksilver, tells them the December rains are close at hand; and that if they remain in their hiding-places in the low grounds, they will be driven out by the approaching deluge. They at length make up their minds to set forth on their travels. With a long-drawn sigh, therefore, the woodc.o.c.k bids farewell to the old oaks that have sheltered it all the summer, and taking leave of its friendly comrades, the squirrels, it sets out on the first fine night for a more genial climate, to the delight, no doubt, of the neighbouring worms, who pop their heads out of window to witness its departure; and the moment their enemy is fairly out of sight, perform many a pirouette on the tip of their tails, and dance upon the gra.s.s in honour of the joyous event.

If a woodc.o.c.k was not a woodc.o.c.k, that is, one of the laziest birds in the creation, it might easily reach, in a few days' flight, the dry heaths, the hills, and elevated regions, which it loves; but woodc.o.c.ks abhor all violent exercise, always preferring the use of their feet to that of their wings, which latter they never agitate, except when necessity requires. Well, they have now set out, and after marching all night by slow and easy stages, when morning comes our woodc.o.c.ks make a halt wherever they happen to be, breakfast as best they may, and then ensconce themselves in some snug spot, where they doze the livelong day, till, refreshed by their twelve hours' rest, they set off again with renewed strength the moment the sun has gone down.

Thus it is that during the middle of November there is no regular flight, but a kind of circulation, of woodc.o.c.ks, perambulating from the lower to the higher regions, and the _gourmet_ and the sportsman fail not to stop them on their way.