myself within easy gunshot, fire at the birds, sometimes killing six, eight, or even ten at a time.
Then, if the snow lasted, there was another thing to look forward to—the chance of tracing a wolf to its lair, and a wolf so traced was everybody’s property. The wolf, being a public enemy, a murderer beyond the pale of the law, might be shot at by all or anyone, and so, in spite of my mother’s cries, who dreaded the double danger for me, you need not ask if I seized my gun, and was first on the spot ready for sport.
The winter of 1817 to 1818 had been long and severe; the snow was lying a foot deep on the ground, and so hard frozen that it had held for a fortnight past, and still there were no tidings of anything.
Towards four o’clock one afternoon Mocquet called upon us; he had come to lay in his stock of powder. While so doing, he looked at me and winked with one eye. When he went out, I followed.
“What is it, Mocquet?” I asked, “tell me.”
“Can’t you guess, Monsieur Alexandre?”
“No, Mocquet.”
“You don’t guess, then, that if I come and buy powder here from Madame, your mother, instead of going to Haramont for it—in short, if I walk three miles instead of only a quarter that distance, that I might possibly have a bit of a shoot to propose to you?”
“Oh, you good Mocquet! and what and where?”
“There’s a wolf, Monsieur Alexandre.”
“Not really?”