And how shall I explain to you the thousand cunning tricks, the diabolical, the ingenious finesses, the Philipistic and Machiavellian diplomacy, which sportsmen employ one towards the other to obtain possession? Two friends, for instance, meet by accident on the same road; with what perfect and impudent lies do they entertain each other!--with what gusto do they try and take one another in!--what cheating doubts do they not mutually endeavour to raise, in their desire to induce each other to take the wrong road! With the effrontery of a _diplomate_, with the assurance of a secretary of legation,--one affirms, his hand on his heart, and looking towards heaven, that he is going to the left, when it is his positive intention, well-considered beforehand, to go to the right. No, France and England, Bresson and Bulwer, playing their game of chess of the Spanish marriages on the green cloth of political rascality,--never said anything comparable to the devices of these lying chevaliers of the forest. Everything is permitted--every stratagem is fair, so long as either is endeavouring to triumph over his adversary; and then, when they have gone so far as to be able to wish one another good afternoon, and each has convinced himself that he has put the other on the wrong road--that, thank the stars, his rival is off, that he is far off, that he cannot see him--what haste! what strides and leaps to get speedily to the spot, and make himself safe! The running of the celebrated Greek, who, with his breast laid open by a ghastly wound, ran eighty miles in ten hours to announce to the impatient Athenians the victory of Marathon, was the pace of a tortoise compared with the demon-racing of these _chasseurs_. And, after all this anxiety and rapid locomotion,--after turning and winding in and out of the wood, and round the wood to avoid the open--across the brook to avoid the bridge--through the brambles and thick underwood to avoid the open path--when you think you have cheated, or, at any rate, distanced your enemy,--when you perceive in front of you the object of your hopes,--the well-known and much-desired hut which seems to invite you to repose after your long day's walk--why, at that interesting moment, even your own, your very own brother would be a veritable Bedouin in your eyes, a man to be put out of the way any how, if he attempted to stop you.