translating Virgil and Tacitus—Montanan—My political opinions 355

CHAPTER II

The single-barrelled gun—Quiot Biche—Biche and Boudoux compared—I become a poacher—It is proposed to issue a writ against me—Madame Darcourt as plenipotentiary—How it happened that Cretan's writ caused me no bother 363

CHAPTER III

Bonaparte's landing at the Gulf of Juan—Proclamations and Ordonnances—Louis XVIII. and M. de Vitrolles—Cornu the hatter—Newspaper information 374

CHAPTER IV

General Exelmans—His trial—The two brothers Lallemand—Their conspiracy—They are arrested and led through Villers-Cotterets—The affronts to which they were subjected 382

CHAPTER V

My mother and I conspire—The secret—M. Richard—La pistole and the pistols—The offer made to the brothers Lallemand in order to save them—They refuse—I meet one of them, twenty-eight years later, at the house of M. le duc de Cazes 389

CHAPTER VI

Napoleon and the Allies—The French army and the Emperor pass through Villers-Cotterets—Bearers of ill tidings 402

CHAPTER VII

Waterloo—The Élysée—La Malmaison 411

CHAPTER VIII

Cæsar—Charlemagne—Napoleon 421

CHAPTER IX

The rout—The haricot mutton reappears—M. Picot the lawyer—By diplomatic means, he persuades my mother to let me go shooting with him—I despise sleep, food and drink 427

CHAPTER X

Trapping larks—I wax strong in the matter of my compositions—The wounded partridge—I take the consequences whatever they are—The farm at Brassoire—M. Deviolaine's sally at the accouchement of his wife 435

CHAPTER XI

M. Moquet de Brassoire—The ambuscade—Three hares charge me—What prevents me from being the king of the battue—Because I did not take the bull by the horns, I just escape being disembowelled by it—Sabine and her puppies 441

BOOK V

CHAPTER I

The second period of my youth—Forest-keepers and sailors—Choron, Moinat, Mildet, Berthelin—La Maison-Neuve 449

CHAPTER II

Choron and the mad dog—Niquet, otherwise called Bobino—His mistress—The boar-hunt—The kill—Bobino's triumph—He is decorated—The boar which he had killed rises again 456

CHAPTER III

Boars and keepers—The bullet of Robin-des-Bois—The pork-butcher 464

CHAPTER IV

A wolf-hunt—Small towns—Choron's tragic death 474

CHAPTER V

My mother realises that I am fifteen years old, and that la marette and la pipée