Twelve years had passed since Mocquet’s nightmare, and I was now over fifteen years of age. It was the winter of 1817 to 1818 ; ten years before that date I had, alas! lost my father.
We no longer had a Pierre for gardener, a Hippolyte for valet, or a Mocquet for keeper; we no longer lived at the Château of Les Fossés or in the villa at Antilly, but in the marketplace of Villers Cotterets, in a little house opposite the fountain, where my mother kept a bureau de tabac , selling powder and shot as well over the same counter.
As you have already read in my Mémoires , although still young, I was an enthusiastic sportsman. As far as sport went, however, that is according to the usual acceptation of the word, I had none, except when my cousin, M. Deviolaine, the ranger of the forest at Villers-Cotterets, was kind enough to ask leave of my mother to take me with him. I filled up the remainder of my time with poaching.
For this double function of sportsman and poacher I was well provided with a delightful single-barrelled gun, on which was engraven the monogram of the Princess Borghese, to whom it had originally belonged. My father had given it me when I was a child, and when, after his death, everything had to be sold, I implored so urgently to be allowed to keep my gun, that it was not sold with the other weapons, and the horses and carriages.
The most enjoyable time for me was the winter; then the snow lay on the ground, and the birds, in their search for food, were ready to come wherever grain was sprinkled for them. Some of my father’s old friends had fine gardens, and I was at liberty to go and shoot the birds there as I liked. So I used to sweep the snow away, spread some grain, and, hiding