"Woodcocks!--what, have you made me walk since the morning through perfect beds of briars and over miles of large stones, escalade the mountains, descend precipices, and brought me through water-courses and dark ravines, to kill a few woodcocks?" "Would you prefer confronting a wild boar?" "Certainly," said the puffing convalescent; "if there was no chance of danger, I should infinitely prefer killing a boar." "For to-day this is impossible." "Why so?" "Why, in the first place, there are no boars in this wood, and it is too late to take you to those which they frequent." "Then we shall find only woodcocks in the place we are going to?" "Nothing else; at least during the half-hour we shall remain." "And if we were to remain more than half an hour?" "Oh! then we might perhaps by accident see a roebuck--perhaps a hungry wolf." "A hungry wolf!--the deuce! And if there should come by chance a wolf to the _Mare_ when I shall be all alone, what must I do?" "Why kill it, to be sure." "To be sure, why of course I should kill the ferocious animal,"--and the banker, though smacking his fingers and whistling as if quite unconcerned, looked very grave. Continuing our walk, we arrived at the _Mares_. "Goodness," said my companion, "how dark it is here,"--looking into each hut that was shown him. "Misericorde! if I were to ensconce myself in this leafy cabin, this gloomy sombre hole, I should fancy myself seated at the bottom of a blacking-bottle--I respectfully decline the honour of occupying the hut." "Very well, let us proceed to another," we exclaimed. But the second was pronounced more lugubrious and melancholy-looking than the first, and the third not more agreeable than the preceding one. "It is no longer a matter of doubt," said the Parisian; "you are a family of owls. What! place myself in these holes, these mouse-traps, in these tumuli of leaves, where the archfiend himself, habituated to every kind of darkness, could not distinguish anything?--thank you, gentlemen. As to you, you can see clear; but by the great telescope of the observatory, if I were to get into one of these rustic ovens, I should not in five minutes be able to distinguish the end of my nose--I should not be able to find my way to my breeches-pocket." "But, my dear sir," said I to him, when alone, for my two friends were now snugly seated in the rejected huts, "you are very difficult to please, and it becomes embarrassing, for these cabins are all alike; when you have seen one you have seen a dozen. Now this, believe me, is a capital one; come, seat yourself here." "I am much obliged to you, not that one; for this pool of water in particular has something very sinister about it; the spot feels raw, and has an unpleasant wolfish air."