where have you set your trap, then?”
“The trarp, why, I put it on my own stomach.”
“And what kind of a trarp did you use?”
“Oh! a first-rate trarp!”
“What was it?”
“The one I made to catch the grey wolf with, that used to kill M. Destournelles’ sheep.”
“Not such a first-rate one, then, for the grey wolf ate up your bait, and then bolted.”
“You know why he was not caught, General.”
“No, I do not.”
“Because it was the black wolf that belonged to old Thibault, the sabot-maker.”
“It could not have been Thibault’s black wolf, for you said yourself just this moment that the wolf that used to come and kill M. Destournelles’ sheep was a grey one.”
“He is grey now, General; but thirty years ago, when Thibault the sabot-maker was alive, he was black; and, to assure you of the truth of this, look at my hair, which was black as a raven’s thirty years ago, and now is as grey as the Doctor’s.”
The Doctor was a cat, an animal of some fame, that you will find mentioned in my Mémoires and known as the Doctor on account of the magnificent fur which nature had given it for a coat.
“Yes,” replied my father, “I know your tale about Thibault, the sabot-maker; but, if the black wolf is the devil, Mocquet, as you say he is, he would not change colour.”
“Not at all, General; only it takes him a hundred years to become quite white, and the last midnight of every hundred years, he turns black as a coal again.”
“I give up the case, then, Mocquet: all I ask is, that you will not tell my son this fine tale of yours, until he is fifteen at least.”
“And why, General?”
“Because it is no use stuffing his mind with nonsense of that kind, until he is old enough to laugh at wolves, whether they are white, grey or black.”
“It shall be as you say, General; he shall hear nothing of this matter.”
“Go on, then.”
“Where had we got to, General?”
“We had got to your trarp, which you had put on your stomach, and you were saying that it was a first-rate trarp.”
“By my faith, General, that was a first-rate trarp!” It weighed a good ten pounds. What am I saying! fifteen pounds at least with its chain!
I put the chain over my wrist.
“And what happened that night?”
“That night? why, it was worse than ever! Generally, it was in her leather overshoes she came and kneaded my chest, but that night she came in her wooden sabots.”
“And she comes like this...?”
“Every blessed one of God’s nights, and it is making me quite thin; you can see for yourself, General, I am growing as thin as a lath. However, this morning I made up my mind.”
“And what did you decide upon, Mocquet?”
“Well, then, I made up my mind I would let fly at her with my gun.”
“That was a wise decision to come to. And when do you think of carrying it out?”
“This evening, or to-morrow at latest, General.”
“Confound it! And just as I was wanting to send you over to Villers-Hellon.”
“That won’t matter, General. Was it something that you wanted done at once?”
“Yes, at once.”
“Very well, then, I can go over to Villers-Hellon,—it’s not above a few miles, if I go through the wood—and get back here this evening; the journey both ways is only twenty-four miles, and we have covered a few more than that before now out shooting, General.”
“That’s settled, then; I will write a letter for you to give to M. Collard, and then you can start.”
“I will start, General, without a moment’s delay.”
My father rose, and wrote to M. Collard; the letter was as follows:
“My dear Collard,
“I am sending you that idiot of a keeper of mine, whom you know; he has taken into his head that an old woman nightmares him every night, and, to rid himself of this vampire, he intends nothing more nor less than to kill her.
“Justice, however, might not look favourably on this method of his for curing himself of indigestion, and so I am going to start him off to you on a pretext of some kind or other. Will you, also, on some pretext or other, send him on, as soon as he gets to you, to Danré, at Vouty, who will send him on to Dulauloy, who, with or without pretext, may then, as far as I care, send him on to the devil?
“In short, he must be kept going for a fortnight at least. By that time we shall have moved out of here and shall be at Antilly, and as he will then no longer be in the district of Haramont, and as his nightmare will probably have left him on the way, Mother Durand will be able to sleep in peace, which I should certainly not advise her to do if Mocquet were remaining anywhere in her neighbourhood.
“He is bringing you six brace of snipe and a hare, which we shot while out yesterday on the marshes of Vallue.
“A thousand-and-one of my tenderest remembrances to the fair Herminie, and as many kisses to the dear little Caroline.
“Your friend,
“Alex. Dumas.”
An hour later Mocquet was on his way, and, at the end of three weeks, he rejoined us at Antilly.
“Well,” asked my father, seeing him reappear in robust health, “well, and how about Mother Durand?”
“Well, General,” replied Mocquet cheerfully, “I’ve got rid of the old mole; it seems she has no power except in her own district.”
VII
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 market-place 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