The Marquis de Souday was utterly indifferent to all these signs of
public animadversion; in fact, he seemed to ignore their existence.
When he observed that his neighbors no longer returned the few visits
that from time to time he felt obliged to pay to them, he rubbed his
hands with satisfaction at being released from social duties, which he
hated and only performed when constrained and forced to do so either
by his daughters or by Jean Oullier.
Every now and then some whisper of the calumnies that were circulating
about Bertha and Mary reached him; but he was so happy with his
factotum, his daughters, and his hounds, that he felt he should be
compromising the tranquillity he enjoyed if he took the slightest
notice of such absurd reports. Accordingly, he continued to course the
hares daily and hunt the boar on grand occasions, and play whist
nightly with the two poor calumniated ones.
Jean Oullier was far from being as philosophical as his master; but
then it must be said that in his position he heard much more than the
marquis did. His affection for the two young girls had now become
fanaticism; he spent his life in watching them, whether they sat,
softly smiling, in the salon of the château, or whether, bending
forward on their horses' necks, with sparkling eyes and animated
faces, they galloped at his side, with their long locks floating in
the wind from beneath the broad brims of their felt hats and
undulating feathers. Seeing them so brave and capable, and at the same
time so good and tender to their father and himself, his heart swelled
with pride and happiness; he felt himself as having a share in the
development of these two admirable creatures, and he wondered why all
the world should not be willing to kneel down to them.
Consequently, the first persons who risked telling him of the rumors
current in the neighborhood were so sharply rebuked for it that they
were frightened and warned others; but Bertha and Mary's true father
needed no words to inform him what was secretly believed of the two
dear objects of his love. From a smile, a glance, a gesture, a sign,
he guessed the malicious thoughts of all with a sagacity that made him
miserable. The contempt that poor and rich made no effort to disguise
affected him deeply. If he had allowed himself to follow his impulses
he would have picked a quarrel with every contemptuous face, and
corrected some by knocking them down, and others by a pitched battle.
But his good sense told him that Bertha and Mary needed another sort
of support, and that blows given or received would prove absolutely
nothing in their defence. Besides, he dreaded--and this was, in fact,
his greatest fear--that the result of some quarrel, if he provoked it,
might be that the young girls would be made aware of the public
feeling against them.
Poor Jean Oullier therefore bowed his head before this cruelly unjust
condemnation, and tears and fervent prayers to God, the supreme
redressor of the cruelties and injustices of men, alone bore testimony
to his grief; but in his heart he fell into a state of profound
misanthropy. Seeing none about him but the enemies of his two dear
children, how could he help hating mankind? And he prepared himself
for the day when some future revolution might enable him to return
evil for evil.
The revolution of 1830 had just occurred, but it had not given Jean
Oullier the opportunity he craved to put these evil designs into
execution. Nevertheless, as rioting and disturbances were not yet
altogether quelled in the streets of Paris, and might still be
communicated to the provinces, he watched and waited.
On a fine morning in September, 1831, the Marquis
de Souday, his daughters, Jean Oullier, and the
pack--which, though frequently renewed since we made its acquaintance,
had not increased in numbers--were hunting in the forest of Machecoul.
It was an occasion impatiently awaited by the marquis, who for the
last three months had been expecting grand sport from it,--the object
being to capture a litter of young wolves, which Jean Oullier had
discovered before their eyes were opened, and which he had, being a
faithful and knowing huntsman to a Master of Wolves, watched over and
cared for for several months. This last statement may demand some
explanations to those of our readers who are not familiar with the
noble art of venery.
When the Duc de Biron (beheaded, in 1602, by order of Henri IV.) was a
youth, he said to his father at one of the sieges of the religious
wars, "Give me fifty cavalry; there's a detachment of two hundred men,
sallying out to forage. I can kill every one of them, and the town
must surrender." "Suppose it does, what then?" "What then? Why, I say
the town will surrender." "Yes; and the king will have no further need
of us. We must continue _necessary_, you ninny!" The two hundred
foragers were not killed. The town was not taken, and Biron and his
son continued "necessary;" that is to say, being necessary they
retained the favor and the wages of the king.
Well, it is with wolves as it was with those foragers spared by the
Duc de Biron. If there were no longer any wolves how could there be a
Wolf-master? Therefore we must forgive Jean Oullier, who was, as we
may say, a corporal of wolves, for showing some tender care for the
nurslings and not slaying them, them and their mother, with the stern
rigor he would have shown to an elderly wolf of the masculine sex.
But that is not all. Hunting an old wolf in the open is impracticable,
and in a battue it is monotonous and tiresome; but to hunt a young
wolf six or seven months old is easy, agreeable, and amusing. So, in
order to procure this charming sport for his master, Jean Oullier, on
finding the litter, had taken good care not to disturb or frighten the
mother; he concerned himself not at all for the loss of sundry of the
neighbors' sheep, which she would of course inevitably provide for her
little ones. He had paid the latter several visits, with touching
solicitude, during their infancy, to make sure that no one had laid a
disrespectful hand upon them, and he rejoiced with great joy when he
one day found the den depopulated and knew that the mother-wolf had
taken off her cubs on some excursion.
The day had now come when, as Jean Oullier judged, they were in fit
condition for what was wanted of them. He therefore, on this grand
occasion, hedged them in to an open part of the forest, and loosed the
six dogs upon one of them.
The poor devil of a cub, not knowing what all this trumpeting and
barking meant, lost his head and instantly quitted the covert, where
he left his mother and brothers and where he still had a chance to
save his skin. He took unadvisedly to another open, and there, after
running for half an hour in a circuit like a hare, he became very
tired from an exertion to which he was not accustomed, and feeling his
big paws swelling and stiffening he sat down artlessly on his tail and
waited.
He did not have to wait long before he found out what was wanted of
him, for Domino, the leading hound, a Vendéan, with a rough gray coat,
came up almost immediately and broke his back with one crunch of his
jaw.
Jean Oullier called in his dogs, took them back to the starting-point,
and ten minutes later a brother of the deceased was afoot, with the
hounds at his heels. This one however, with more sense than the other,
did not leave the covert, and various sorties and charges, made
sometimes by the other cubs and sometimes by the mother-wolf, who
offered herself voluntarily to the dogs, delayed for a time his
killing. But Jean Oullier knew his business too well to let such
actions compromise success. As soon as the cub began to head in a
straight line with the gait of an old wolf, he called off his dogs,
took them to where the cub had broken, and put them on the scent.
Pressed too closely by his pursuers, the poor wolfling tried to
double. He returned upon his steps, and left the wood with such
innocent ignorance that he came plump upon the marquis and his
daughters. Surprised, and losing his head, he tried to slip between
the legs of the horses; but M. de Souday, leaning from his saddle,
caught him by the tail, and flung him to the dogs, who had followed
his doubling.
These successful kills immensely delighted the marquis, who did not
choose to end the matter here. He discussed with Jean Oullier whether
it was best to call in the dogs and attack at the same place, or
whether, as the rest of the cubs were evidently afoot, it would not be
best to let the hounds into the wood pell-mell to find as they
pleased.
But the mother-wolf, knowing probably that they would soon be after
the rest of her progeny, crossed the road not ten steps distant from
the dogs, while the marquis and Jean Oullier were arguing. The moment
the little pack, who had not been re-coupled, saw the animal, they
gave one cry, and, wild with excitement, rushed upon her traces.
Calls, shouts, whips, nothing could hold them, nothing stop them. Jean
Oullier made play with his legs, and the marquis and his daughters put
their horses to a gallop for the same purpose; but the hounds had
something else than a timid, ignorant cub to deal with. Before them
was a bold, vigorous, enterprising animal, running confidently, as if
sure of her haven, in a straight line, indifferent to valleys, rocks,
mountains, or water-courses, without fear, without haste, trotting
along at an even pace, sometimes surrounded by the dogs, whom she
mastered by the power of an oblique look and the snapping of her
formidable jaws.
The wolf, after crossing three fourths of the forest, broke out to the
plain as though she were making for the forest of Grand'Lande. Jean
Oullier had kept up, thanks to the elasticity of his legs, and was now
only three or four hundred steps behind the dogs. The marquis and his
daughters, forced by the ditches to follow the curve of the paths,
were left behind. But when they reached the edge of the woods and had
ridden up the slope which overlooks the little village of Marne, they
saw, over a mile ahead of them, between Machecoul and La Brillardière,
in the midst of the gorse which covers the ground near those villages
and La Jacquelerie, Jean Oullier, his dogs, and his wolf, still in the
same relative positions, and following a straight line at the same
gait.
The success of the first two chases and the rapidity of the ride
stirred the blood of the Marquis de Souday.
"Morbleu!" he cried; "I'd give six years of life to be at this moment
between Saint-Étienne de Mermorte and La Guimarière and send a ball
into that vixen of a wolf."
"She is making for the forest of Grand'Lande," said Mary.
"Yes," said Bertha; "but she will certainly come back to the den, so
long as the cubs have not left it. She won't forsake her own wood
long."
"I think it would be better to go back to the den," said Mary. "Don't
you remember, papa, that last year we followed a wolf which led us a
chase of ten hours, and all for nothing; and we had to go home with
our horses blown, the dogs lame, and all the mortification of a dead
failure?"
"Ta, ta, ta!" cried the marquis; "that wolf wasn't a she-wolf. You can
go back, if you like, mademoiselle; as for me, I shall follow the
hounds. Corbleu! it shall never be said I wasn't in at the death."
"We shall go where you go, papa," cried both girls together.
"Very good; forward, then!" cried the marquis, vigorously spurring his
horse, and galloping down the slope. The way he took was stony and
furrowed with the deep ruts of which Lower Poitou keeps up the
tradition to this day. The horses stumbled repeatedly, and would soon
have been down if they had not been held up firmly; it was evidently
impossible to reach the forest of Grand'Lande before the game.
Monsieur de Souday, better mounted than his daughters, and able to
spur his beast more vigorously, had gained some rods upon them.
Annoyed by the roughness of the road, he turned his horse suddenly
into an open field beside it, and made off across the plain, without
giving notice to his daughters. Bertha and Mary, thinking that they
were still following their father, continued their way along the
dangerous road.
In about fifteen minutes from the time they lost sight of their father
they came to a place where the road was deeply sunken between two
slopes, at the top of which were rows of trees, the branches meeting
and interlacing above their heads. There they stopped suddenly,
thinking that they heard at a little distance the well-known barking
of their dogs. Almost at the same moment a gun went off close beside
them, and a large hare, with bloody hanging ears, ran from the hedge
and along the road before them, while loud cries of "Follow! follow!
tally-ho! Tally-ho!" came from the field above the narrow roadway.[1]
---------------
[Footnote 1: The English cry "tally-ho" comes from the French cry
_taillis au_,--"to the copse," or "covert."]
---------------
The sisters thought they had met the hunt of some of their neighbors,
and were about to discreetly disappear, when from the hole in the
hedge through which the hare had forced her way, came Rustaud, one of
their father's dogs, yelping loudly, and after Rustaud, Faraud,
Bellaude, Domino, and Fanfare, one after another, all in pursuit of
the wretched hare, as if they had chased that day no higher game.
The tail of the last dog was scarcely through the opening before
a human face appeared there. This face belonged to a pale,
frightened-looking young man, with touzled head and haggard eyes, who
made desperate efforts to bring his body after his head through the
narrow passage, calling out, as he struggled with the thorns and
briars, "Tally-ho! tally-ho!" in the same voice Bertha and Mary had
heard about five minutes earlier.