But also, by St. Hubert, if you remain the lord and master of this _Mare_, how your heart leaps, how all fatigue is forgotten! and when the twilight approaches, what a fever there is in your veins!--what anxiety! I have heard of the delirious and suffocating emotions of a lover waiting for his mistress at the rendezvous. Fiddlesticks! I say, gruel and iced-water. The most volcanic Romeo that ever penned a letter or scaled a wall, is to the sportsman waiting amidst the howling storm on a dark night for the wolves, what a cup of cream is to a bottle of vitriol. As for myself, I would give,--yes, ladies, I am wolf enough to say,--that I would willingly give up the delightful emotions of ninety rendezvous, with the loveliest women in the world, black or white, for twelve with a boar or a wolf. In return for this bad taste, I shall probably be devoured some day or other,--a fate no doubt duly merited. I will suppose, therefore, that the sportsman is squatting quietly in his hut, like a serpent in a bush. With what ardour and nervous anxiety does he not await the propitious and long-expected hour! He throws open the ivory doors of his castle in the air,--his hopes are multiplied a thousandfold. What shall I shoot?--what shall I not shoot? Will it be a she-wolf, or a roebuck? No, I prefer a boar. Will he be a large one? But if by chance I should kill a sow?--what a capital affair that would be; the young ones never leave their mother; perhaps I should bag three or four,--perhaps the whole fare. But then, how shall I carry them off? Perhaps the wolves will save me the difficulty of contriving that, and dispute my title to them,--perhaps they will attack me, eat me, the sow, the pigs, and my sealskin cap. How, I beseech you, is the following _monologue_ to stand comparison with the fierce excitement of such anticipations? Will she come this evening, the darling--will my sweetest be able to come?--shall I be blessed with one kiss?--shall it be on the left cheek or the right, or shall I press her lips to mine? Bah! there can be no comparison in the hunter's mind; and then you barricade yourself in your hut as evening approaches, strengthen the weak points, study the best positions, look to your arms; the day seems as if it would never close,--nothing is left for you to do but to muse in the interval, and think of the poor maudlin lovers, who at this very hour are squatting under a wall like so many young apes; or of him who, half concealed, stands on the watch at the angle of a dirty street, waiting with a fluttering heart the arrival of some sentimental little chit of a girl, who is nevertheless coquette enough to keep him waiting for half an hour. And again, with what disdain and contempt you regard such birds as pigeons, turtle-doves, buzzards, wild duck, and teal; hares and foxes, too, which make their appearance from time to time,--to kill these never enters your head. What, not the fox, with his splendid bushy tail?