Often, therefore, walking gently on the soft ground, have I stolen to one of these _meurgers_, and throwing in a stone, generally turned out some partridges and rabbits that were there quietly ensconced; I have also, and greatly to my surprise, heard there the growl of a wolf, which, rising lazily amongst the bushes, stumbled and fell, and was evidently incapable of getting further. A salute from both barrels, with small shot, scarcely tickled his skin; but it brought him once more on his legs, though only to fall again,--when, having reloaded, I advanced on him and administered a double dose in his ear, which had the desired effect. The fact was, he was quite drunk, though not disorderly. These wolves, during the ardent heats of August, suffer dreadfully from thirst; and finding no water, take to the vineyards, and endeavour to assuage it by eating large quantities of grapes, very cool, and no doubt very delightful at the time; but the treacherous juice ferments, Bacchanalian fumes soon infect their brain, and for several hours these gentlemen are for a time entirely deprived of their senses. What a field for Father Mathew; but never, I am certain, has the worthy Apostle of Temperance ever dreamed of offering the pledge to the wolves of Le Morvan--the rub would be to hang the medal round the necks of these Bacchanals of the forest. CHAPTER XIX. Wolf-hunting, an expensive amusement--The _Traquenard_--Mode of setting this trap--A night in the forest with Navarre--The young lover--Dreadful accident that befell him--His courage and efforts to escape--The fatal catastrophe--The poor mad mother. Wolf-hunting in the forests is an expensive amusement, whether they are killed by the method I have described,--namely, of employing beaters, and shooting them when breaking through the line of sportsmen, or running them down with dogs. The peasants and _traqueurs_ have to be paid, in the first case; hunters and hounds have to be purchased and maintained, in the second, without counting the innumerable incidental expenses which a kennel of hounds always brings in its train. This kind of establishment is too extravagant for our country-gentlemen, and thus it is that for one wolf killed in the great meetings, or with the dogs, thirty are taken in pits and snares, or by some species of stratagem. Every small farmer or large proprietor, to protect his family and his cattle,--every shepherd, to protect himself and his flock, invokes to his aid the genius of strategy; and as the mind of man is a sponge full of expedients, from which once pressed by the hard fingers of necessity many an ingenious device is extracted, innumerable are the various seductive baits that in our plains and forests are placed in the way of the gluttonous appetite of the wolf; and I shall now describe the inventions that are more generally adopted.