There is not nearly so much caricature in this picture as our readers may be disposed to think. Whoever has passed a few weeks of the autumn in a French provincial town, must have witnessed and laughed at the very comical proceedings of the _chasseurs_, the high-sounding title assumed by every Frenchman who ever pointed a gun at a cock-sparrow. One sees them going forth in the morning in various picturesque and fanciful costumes, their loins girded with a broad leathern belt, a most capacious game-bag slung over their shoulder, a fowling-piece of murderous aspect balanced on their arm; their heads protected from the October sun by every possible variety of covering, from the Greek skull-cap to the broad-brimmed Spanish sombrero. Away they go, singly, or by twos and threes, accompanied by a whole regiment of dogs, for the most part badly bred, and worse broken curs, which, when they get into the field, go pottering about in a style that would sorely tempt an English sportsman to bestow upon them the contents of both barrels. Towards the close of the day, take a stroll outside the town, and you meet the heroes returning. "Well, what sport?" "_Pas mal, mon cher_. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the chasseur produces--a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail, and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird, but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go, we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge, (grey ones are very scarce in France,) his exultation knows no bounds. The day on which such a thing occurs is a red-letter day with him for the rest of his life. He goes home at once and inscribes the circumstance in the family archives. But this state of things, it will perhaps be urged, may arise from the scarcity of game in France, as probably as from the sportsman's want of skill. True; but the worst is to come. After you have duly admired and examined snipe, pigeon, quail, and water-hen, your friend again rummages in the depths of his _gibeciere_, and pulls out--what?--a handful of tomtits and linnets, which he has been picking off every hedge for five miles round. "_Je me suis rabattu sur le petit gibier_," he says, with a grin and a shrug, and walks away, a proud man and a happy, leaving you in admiration of his prowess. M. Dumas expresses a wish to make the acquaintance of one of these modern Nimrods, and his friend Mery arranges a supper, to which he invites a certain Monsieur Louet, who plays the fourth bass in the orchestra of the Marseilles theatre. The conversation after supper is a good specimen of _persiflage_. After doing ample justice to an excellent repast, during which he had scarcely uttered a word,